Dream Team: The 10 Best Conservative Columnists
Never before have right-leaning readers been able to enjoy such a surplus of excellence in political commentary. Every day, on sites like this one and countless others, über-talented wordsmiths stir conservative passion and shape the national debate. In honor of our country’s Olympic basketball legacy, selecting our own literary Dream Team is in order, in recognition of ten authors atop our political pyramid.
The elder statesman on the team is George F. Will. A cagey veteran of the sport – who’s been to hell and back fighting the wars of yesteryear – Will is the consummate conservative advocate. Never far from his biting commentary is the perfect historical analogy, ready to flex its logical muscle to buttress his argument. His great foible is that his technique is so polished and vocabulary so vast, at times his shots can go over our heads; a dictionary must be on hand to get through a Will column. No matter. He’s been making his shots for over five decades and continues to frame conservative ideas in their brightest light.
The heart of the team rests with Heather Mac Donald and Mark Steyn. They are the scrappy villains that home fans adore and opponents love to hate. (This is what happens when you tell the truth about the thorniest issues confronting America.) Mac Donald – a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and City Journal contributor — dissects liberalism’s unintended but unavoidable social consequences: the breakdown of the black family and crime in immigrant communities. Her literary pastime is taking classic liberal mantras – like the benefits of affirmative action and the cancer of racial profiling and bias in policing – and pulverizing them to smithereens.
A writer from the progressive Mother Jones once lamented that her brethren avoided confronting Mac Donald:
She’ll mess with your mind and make you either up your politico-cultural game or admit you were wrong. What worries me is that so few on “our” side can, or bother to, go toe to toe with her. Just about every one of her pieces is a statistical and analytical tour-de-force.
As for Steyn, literary Dream Teamers need not only be American. This Canadian citizen (though American resident and British-accented) combines talk-radio pugilism with refined intellectual script. His focus is usually big picture: bemoaning European statism and western decline, and methodically explaining the global threat of Muslim fundamentalism, particularly across the pond. In the process, he has earned the types of enemies that make conservatives proud. A body called the Canadian Human Rights Commission condemned Steyn as hateful for his lurid and analytical warning of Islamic demographic incursions. A critic once noted that “Mark Steyn is an oddity: his thoughts and themes are sane and serious—but he writes like a maniac.” Well, every great team needs a masterful maniac.
You have to be kidding. Where is Ann Coulter? Without her, the other guys are unknowns except for people who get up on sunday to watch the political shows. She showed the conservatives how to fight back and not whine and whimper whenever the liberals were mean to them. I respect the list and the people on it, but forgetting Ann Coulter is just wrong.
This list is straight out of some posh country club. So I am guessing that ‘Kyle Stone’ is the nom de guerre for Susan Collins.
Just my opinion.
Anyone who would include David Brooks in a list of conservatives obviously does not have the slightest clue as to the meaning of the word “conservative.”
Then I saw that the author went to University of Michigan, which explains a lot, being surrounded by arrogant condescending libs and the University being a haven for elitists of whatever political stripe (which explains Brooks, Will, and Noonan).
HOW COULD PJ (M). FORGET PJ (O’ROURKE)?????
Dittos for Ann.
Agree with Ann comments. How about Andrew Breitbart for team mascot? Writing not his primary trade, no one better got oit in the crowd’s face better, energizing some fans, shocking opposition fans to speechlessness while encouraging all fans to scream in a cacauphanous free voice. Also: Kim Strassel and Dan Henninger.
Really! Where is Ann? Peggy Noonan OUT Ann IN, then the list is pretty much perfect. All my favorites are in there (especially VDH and Steyn).
Agree with Momw2boys – Ann, IN: Peggy, OUT.
another momwith2boys
Ann Colter, Michael Savage both proflic authors, commintators, in-your-face with the truth about “progressives”.
Just like grade school, the team caption hardley ever choses the best without personal bias getting in the way, this article prooves it.
Take out George Will and Peggy Nooner,add in Annie and you are there.
There are a lot of heavy hitters on the right wing at the moment. The left has barely anyone.
http://uselections2012blog.blogspot.ca/
Coulter has been exposed as a neo-statist with her disgusting Romney propaganda pieces-three cheers for what Ann? George Will is very good or very, very bad. Michelle Malkin is a leader and has replaced Coulter as a true conservative-not a word churning, nausea inducing placeholder. Michelle also gives attribution unlike Coulter who does not. Mark Styn is the king and Krauthammer like Will hits hit hard and on target but once in awhile leaves conservatives scratching our heads with “what the hell was that?”. The King of all is Mark Levin if you put his words in an article. Blows the regressives away with one punch. Goldberg and Co. are great. We have many great conservative writers and it’s hard to name all of them. American Spectator is home to many as is PJ Media. God Bless PJ Media! American Thinker is no slouch folks.
American Spectator? Who is there of note nowadays? I never cottoned to R. Emmett Tyrell, with his imitation H. L. Mencken style.
Randall Hoven is the best populiser of economics you could ever hope for. He is quite outstanding. He takes good quality research and tell us lay people what it means. It is often shocking. It is gripping. He is a realist and a pessimist. No wonder he is not main stream. it is just too scary.
Coulter’s entertaining and popular, but she’s not serious. While reading all those zingers she flings out, it’s obvious to me: She’s not analyzing, she’s not discussing, she’s not reporting or arguing: she’s performing.
I didn’t know that about Ann Coulter. Thanks for informing everyone of her true nature. Which of her several books have you actually read? I must have missed one. But you are absolutely right. I am also sure there must be a law prohibiting intellectuals from also being entertainers. Not. Ann could tear you up in one of your prejudicial heartbeats, but I bet she wouldn’t bother to do it.
Not wanting to be rude, but are you mad? Where is Anthony Daniels/Theodore Dalrymple on your list?
I agree, he has turned me into a solid conservative.
Too true about BHO.i didn’t actually go for him,but I insisted he be given a chance-he never actually said anything during his campaign,so I figgered… Being so wrong is painfully embarassing.
Replace with Brooks with Coulter definitely!
This list could benefit from the extra testosterone.
Where’s Mark Levin? Hello?
Brooks? Noonan? Deam Team? You are dreaming alright.
Country Club Intellectual RINO applies to many on your list.
Michael Walsh aka David Kahane and Kevin Williamson on, Noonan and Brooks off.
I have to point out that Ann Coulter calls out the liberals for the things they do and doesn’t apologize for telling the truth. I remember on CSPAN the host asked her why she called some liberal writer or politician a “half wit,” and she answered, laughing as she did it, ” Because he is one.” She drives the liberals insane and takes the hits that some on that list don’t experience. She was one of the leaders in the fight against liberal bullies and deserves a lot more respect than she recieved in this column. I applaud the Mark Steyn pick, and the brainy guys are o.k., but if the fight against liberals was left to George will and Charles Krauthammer, who I respect as thinkers, we would have already lost.
I have to say that Ann coulter is the equivalent of William Wallace of conservative writers but with more brains than to trust the foppish scottish nobleman guy who kept betraying Mel. She wades into the fray and kicks butt and takes names. Krauthammer and Will especially are great in the quiet confines of polite conversation, but that doesn’t get the job done fighting against liberal pit fighters who take no prisoners and to whom no dirty trick is too low. If I had to go into a political debate against liberal low lifes who outright lie without fear of being contradicted by the media, I would want Ann Coulter by my side, or leading the way.
And then she takes a break to go out and have lunch with her good friend Bill “The Perfect Moonbat” Maher? Strange. Makes one suspect she views conservatism as a kind of game played for a living, like golf or football.
http://www.google.com/search?q=bill+maher+ann+coulter+friendship&rlz=1C1ARAB_enUS440US448&aq=f&sugexp=chrome,mod=18&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
This has been my slant on Coulter for a long time. Rooting for Christy and Romney all the while dissing or simply ignoring conservatives tells me all I need to know about Ann Coulter.
Concur. Entertaining & Witty are not disqualifiers. And she does real research & is a real, serious thinker to boot. But her blind spot on Christy & Romney is a major disconnect.
Wobbly Progressive Brooks needs to go.
A fighter like Coulter or Michelle Malkin, someone willing to battle and get their hands bloody should be there instead.
Dittos for Malkin — but she gets to bring Zell Miller with her when appearing with Chrissy Matthews.
Let’s not forget that Brooks became sold on Obama because of the crease in his pant leg! Such a deep thinker.
Ann Coulter & Rush Limbaugh are the best of the bunch. I’d dump Brooks & Peggy Noonan. Obviously, Victor Davis Hanson is the best of the bunch. Noonan isn’t a real conservative & went soft on O. Brooks shouldn’t even be on the list. Limbaugh has the guts to call out liberals on anything foolish they do, but was left off. So, what’s the deal???
Hard to beat Mark Steyn whether he’s on the air or writing…
Steyn is a first-rate propagandist. I wish there were a nicer word for it, because I mean it in a positive way. His wit, simultaneously inspiring and hilarious, kept my spirits up during the Aughties, as we did such hard, endless battle with jihadists abroad and nanny-statists and Leftist seditionists at home.
The nicer word you are looking for is “polemicist”.
Rush towers over even this highly august group. But he’s not a columnist. Noonan & Brooks are terrific writers and serve a purpose as bridges to certain members of the media/government elites, but fall victim to the ever present need to be liked. Same with Will, sometimes. Even Krautheimer, tho I think his occasional apostasies are arrived at sincerely, if wrongly. I’d replace Noonan & Brooks with Coulter & Krystal, who I don’t see getting any mentions here. Malkin is honest, hard working, & a great reporter, but lacks to literary chops & likability factor that can appeal beyond the base.
I have my favorites, many of them are given all due credit at my Zionist & Conservative blog – http://www.adinakutnicki.com
I tend to lean towards those who are of piece with the facts (no revisionism allowed), AND can kick butt too. Polite chit chat is not going to cut it.
We are at war.
Therefore, Steyn, Malkin, David Greenfield & Diana West top my list, but there are (thankfully!) others.
Agreed. The list is mostly dopey and outdated. David Brooks? Dream on.
We also have some outstanding bloggers. Think of Wretchard, the Powerline crew, Neo-neocon and many others. People like this show the breadth of conservative thinking and inspire us all to keep thinking and learning.
Michell Malkin??? So where is SHE on the list???
Was quite pleased to see Heather McDonald on the list.
She needs a larger audience for sure.
I’ve never read Heather, will have to check her out!
You should for sure.
Years ago, a very progressive cousin of mine( an educator of course) had one of her sons of mixed race pulled over in a bad neighborhood, late at night, while cruising slowly.
She was outraged, as her son was well behaved and educated, with no unlawful history. A good kid(he is). She of course was convinced it was “racism”, although it was in a problematic, mostly black neighborhood.
I was researching the racial profiling subject and came across an article written by her called:
“The Myth of Racial Profiling”
http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_2_the_myth.html
Heather simply disected the phenomenon, with facts and historical reference.
Still a good read.
All her stuff based on homework and facts. The stuff the left is allergic to.
Definitely. There are a couple of arguments I could have about this list, but Heather’s name is a welcome surprise. Clear, well-researched, and unafraid.
Noonan fell for the Obama scam, I will never take her seriously again. Brooks? You’re kidding right?
Brooks should moderate the presidential debates. He’d have the candidates cross their legs and then decide the winner based on the crease in his pant leg.
George Will?
The “number 1 conservative journalist” wants to ban football. This doesn’t sound like a way towards smaller government
Brooks is no more a conservative than Andrew Sullivan, and is still drinking the Obama Kool-Aid. ’nuff said, he doesn’t belong on any conservative list.
Likewise, Noonan. She writes better than Brookie, but she, too, drank the Obama Kool-Aid.
No one who drank the Obama Kool-Aid can be considered a conservative, or even classical liberal. Anyone with half a brain should have figured out he was a socialist or (if you prefer because of the crony capitalism) a fascist.
You omit Ron Radosh, who is far more a serious intellectual than some you do name.
Likewise Coulter, who is a bomb thrower, but also writes well and is a serious conservative intellectual in her spare time.
You totally miss Paul Rahe, who is at least as heavyweight as either Hanson or Sowell, though not as much a ‘popularizer’. His work Soft Despotism is absolutely first rank intellectual history/political philosophy.
Brooks 1999 yes, Brooks 2012 no. As you say, as with Andrew Sullivan.
Ditto Noonan – 1999 yes, 2012 maybe not.
For that matter I’m not sure what’s gotten into the good Doctor Krauthammer the last year or two.
How about Bret Stephens, WSJ? Also El Rushbo can be counted on a couple of times per week to spout a page or two of outstanding analysis. Michelle Malkin certainly. And how about my favorite wretchard aka Richard Fernandez aka Belmond Club right here on PJMedia?
Richard Fernandez is so outstanding, so brilliant, that I feel ashamed and inadequate at my own manifest shallowness. I am not worthy.
This list is more insulting to our intelligence than that list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th Century that did not include Gone With The Wind.
It appears to be a list of the columnists that Kyle Stone reads.
Brooks??? Noonan? Are you drinking your kool aid with a chaser? With a few exceptions, yours is a list of beltway approved “conservatives”. There are DOZENS more you have left out and certainly Anne Coulter tops the list of your unmentionables. Peggy Noonan is an “accessory” in the conservative linguistic wardrobe. Just so the right can say they have SOME fashion sense. Get a grip.
Michell Malkin doesn’t belong on the list. Her writing can be so vicious that HER MESSAGE gets lost in her anger and vitriol.
I respectfully disagree Michelle Malkin belongs on the list.
Agree. What about Krystal, or Fred Barnes for that matter. Barnes may not rise to the Aristotelian levels of thinking of some of the names on this list, but Krystal surely does. As does Hernandez btw. Does a blog column count? Or are we restricted to those in an actual, you know, newspaper?
Missing from the top of the list, to paraphrase Joe Biden, in “one word”, Ann Coulter. We wonder if the good gentleman compiling this list is also on the Oscar committee, only awarding Oscars to films the people don’t see, don’t like or don’t know–keeping it in elite circles. Will the gentleman act as a true conservative and reconsider facts–Ann Coulter is a prolific writer and if not the most read conservative columnist, then in the top one and a half. should she be eliminated for this wide interest and appreciation?
I’d take TWS’s Matt LaBash over David Brooks.
As well as Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Michelle Malkin, Timothy P. Carney, VDH, Mark Steyn, Thomas Sowell, Charles Payne & Matthew Continetti.
>>Dream Team: The 10 Best Conservative Columnists<<
After the last 4 years, Brooks and Noonan have no business on a list with this title. The ABC News-ification of Pajamas Media continues apace. You know, to write a column like this, it might help a bit if the author of it had a passing acquaintance with what it means to have conservative political views, but apparently not at PJM.
Krauthammer, sorry, no. He is the Republican elite and stabs conservatives in the back too many times.
Peggy Noonan and David Brooks do not belong on this list. Brooks is a mederate and Noonan’s views are too incoherent to be called anything unless flowery and pretentious can be called an ideology. Noonan used to write well. Now she’s become a caricature of herself. Please replace Noonan and Brooks with Ross Douthat and Michell’s Napkin.
Sorry about the clumsy thumbs. I meant to write Michelle Napkin.
Krauthammer is hit and miss, half the time he’s the voice of the permanent political class. He just wrote about the influence of VP picks with not a word about Palin. Yet his disdain for Palin does not stop him from parroting many of the things she says. Like Coulter, there may be a jealousy factor. Palin has an outstanding record of accomplishments. Her detraciors are all talk.
Yeah, let’s see: there’s the gasline that cost Alaska a half billion bucks and that will never be built, the oil tax regime that has made North Dakota the hot energy province rather than Alaska, and the Ethics Act reforms the Democrats wrote and which ultimately chased her from office so she could go make money off people like you who believe her crap. Yep, she’s accomplished.
Yep, she throttled Obama more from her facebook page than all the other columnists combined.
Art. You have applauded the demise of Joe Miller in the past and now disparage Sarah Palin. Alaska has been “blessed” with Lisa Murkowski. What gives?
If you watch Joe Miller’s lips, you can catch a glimpse of Sarah Palin’s fingers. She’s a petty, spiteful fraud who after running a government about the size of a small real estate office and losing a bid to be the Lt. Gov, was infuriated that Frank Murkowski didn’t appoint her to the US Senate. After being given what was then the State’s most lucrative and undemanding patronage job to shut her up, she still declared war on all things Republican and, especially, all things Murkowski. When she played “kiss and tell” she became every Democrat’s favorite Republican and while Governor basically governed as a populist/Democrat, pandering her way to high levels of popularity. With the Permanent Fund Dividend at around $2K a head and an extra $1K/head she threw out to the people with the high oil prices of ’06 – ’07 as a “natural resource dividend,” a yellow dog would have had 80% approval. The signature policies that she so touted have been signal failures; the AGIA gasline will never be built and Alaska will never get the half-billion back, the ACES tax scheme would be an unconscionable “windfall profits tax” if anyone else had done it, gave the Democrats their long-held dream of taxation or oil industry profits rather than production, and has chased pretty much all major company exploration and development out of Alaska. Along the way, she caused so much dissention in the Republican Party here that our majority in the House was diminished and we lost control of the Senate to the Democrats, interestingly to the same Democrats, Hollis French et al., who hounded her after she was the nominee.
As to Lisa Murkowski, appointing her was the single worst thing Frank did and the administration never recovered. It was important to re-elect her in ’06 to spoil Tony Knowles’ planned ascention to the Senate in ’06. (Back in ’94 when Knowles was first elected Governor, my first assignment from the new Democrat administration was to design a plan to cycle all major contract renewal negotiations with the State’s employee unions to be coincident with the general elections for the next 12 years, something our bargaining law was designed to prevent. Funny thing, when Knowles’ Lt. Gov. was running in ’02, all the contracts were set to expire in the first six months of the new administration, a situation that a Democrat could fix over white wine at the Gov’s house and which they anticipated would sentence a Republican to years of labor unrest. Our whole labor relations policy in the first two years of the Administration was to get and keep the unions under contract so they wouldn’t be whipped up to a seething fury in ’06 and elect Knowles to the Senate. We succeeded. Lisa should have been primaried by a well-established Republican who was actually an Alaskan in ’10, perhaps John Binckley, the guy Frank should have appointed in ’02. (In Frank’s defense, the only choice he had was to anger the people who liked Sarah or anger the people who liked Binckley. Unfortunately, he chose to anger everyone with the Lisa appointment.) But by ’10, between the USDOJ’s mau-mauing of Alaska Republicans and Sarah’s efforts, the Republican Party of Alaska was in such disarray that candidates and interest groups held the reins rather than the Party. Nobody that was anybody pitched in against Lisa from either party and Sarah put her sockpuppet Miller up and secured some Tea Party backing for him. In a deadly dull primary with almost no other contested races he eked out a narrow victory over Lisa, and when the people saw what had happened, they said “Oh, my God.” Lisa has had the good fortune of facing a union and greenie shill in Knowles and a whack-job in Miller. The whole dynamic has made her even more of a wild-eyed moderate than ever and also made her form some alliances that if she helps she’ll be destroyed with what remains of the Republican base that supports her, and if she doesn’t she’ll face the wrath of the unions and Native corporations that think they own her. Hopefully, we can replace her with a sane, legitimate Republican in ’16, but Sarah’s efforts have made it possible for Alaska to have two Democrat senators for the first time since 1968 and with the help of the DOJ, to have a Democrat hold federal office for the first time since ’80. But, if all you know about her is from her quips and press releases, you think she’s wonderful I guess.
Sarah’s great. Art is not, but he is quite the piss artist.
@Gary Ogletree – Got any objective rebuttal to anything I said about her? Any pictures of the new Alaska Gasline? Any pictures of new oil wells in Alaska? Any statistics showing increased or even stable oil production since ACES? Thought not! Damn, she is pretty though, isn’t she? For an old broad, anyway.
It was a “lucrative and undemanding patronage job” because it demanded that its holder keep his or her mouth shut about the corruption rife in Alaskan government. Sarah cleaned it up – Murkowski was in the way. That’s why she was elected governor and why she had 80% popularity when chosen as McCain’s running mate. Her brand of politics is exactly what we needed then and need even more now.
Try again.
@Jamie W – Only in Sarah’s febrile imagination did she clean up anything. The USDOJ was mau-mauing Alaska Republicans in their quest to destroy Senator Stevens and she piled in with the Democrats for some stupid Ethics Act reforms, the same Ethics Act reforms that chased her from office when she decided that making money off people like you was her real calling.
you’re jealous of Sarah Palin and it shows. You’re nothing next to her, and you know it.
I don’t know how anyone can be “jealous” of someone who could not wade her way through an interview with Katie Couric (of all people) & is a quitter. She is not worthy of respect by any measure. She is an utter flake.
if that’s all sarah palin is, how come such a hot shot like art chance spends so much time, passion, and effort vomiting and spewing all that poisonous bile out of his guts over the poor thing every chance he gets?
now there’s a flake, if ever there was one.
you’re just as bad as he is, bobbcat, only trying to play it cool. pathetic, the two of you.
@ well, really – And I especially don’t pay much attention to sycophantic idiots who either are too dumb to understand the formatting or are too chicken to have a name. C4P paying you, or do you just have the hots for Palin? Fundamentally, if she’d been 55 and frumpy when she entered statewide or federal politics, nobody would ever have heard of her. The reality is that she does live rent free in the heads of lefties and can deliver a pretty good soundbite that drives them nuts from time to time, so, she’s good for that. That’s all she’ll do from now on. The Glenn Rice thing assured that she’ll never actually run for office again and will never put herself in a place where she has to answer actual questions.
well. Surely the “pathetic” Art & I must be sadly misinformed. Surely you can come up with the proverbial laundry list of wonderful attributes that Sarah Palin possesses. I await your answer with bated breath.
well. Meant to add that we just spent a week & a half in Alaska, rented a cabin in Girdwood, visited Anchorage, Talkeetna, Seward & Whittier. Had plenty of time talking with the locals. None seemed to harbor much respect for Palin; in fact, they seemed to believe like I do, that she is a flake. Like Obama, she fell from grace…….
@bobbcat – You can always tell a Palinbot, but you can’t tell them much. Glad you enjoyed your stay, and you’re right; she couldn’t get elected dogcatcher here, even in Wasilly. She was pretty, had a ready quip, and caught a wave. I spent Monday morning staff meetings with the ditz in her brief tenure in a government bigger than a mom ‘n pop office; she was clueless and when she became Governor, she ran off everybody that Murkowski had brought in, put in a few of her campaign/Wasilla buddies and basically left the holdover Democrats/congenital ‘crats in charge. And before one of her sycophants interprets that to mean she ran me off; I was long gone even before she became the nominee. In June of ’06 I was well past retirement eligibility, knew Murkowski wasn’t going to be re-elected, knew that I didn’t want to either go back to the merit system under Knowles or become new BFFs with Sarah, so I decided to retire and go fishing.
I’ve been around government and politics long enough to NEVER be jealous of fakes, frauds, or phonies, and I don’t pay much attention to sycophantic idiots either.
Well, hardly ever.
With all these fakes, frauds, phonies, and sycophantic idiots, you have your hands full, it seems.
Brooks is an average writer and grossly overrated thinker. His inclusion on the “Dream Team” discredits this article completely.
I think we’re all taking this too seriously: Kyle Stone is a very young man with an undergraduate degree in history (general? specialized?) from a well-regarded state flagship and a law degree from what is a decidedly second tier (whichever Loyola is below #50) law school, practicing insurance defense work (which is not exactly the elite of the profession). I’m sure he’s a very decent and earnest young man, and he’s probably as solidly conservative as anyone with his academic background is likely to be. That doesn’t make him remotely qualified to judge the universe of conservative/classical liberal columnists and thinkers and produce a “best ten” list that anyone ought to take seriously. I realize this is an ad hominem argument, but I seriously doubt that Attorney Stone is either widely or deeply enough read in the political philosophy that shaped the Founders (from classical authors through the Founders’ contemporaries in the Enlightenments), American letters over the past three centuries generally, or even American political history, that it makes any sense to think he has anything to contribute beyond a generalized sense of what’s pleasing to him and popularly accessible. Tainted by quasi-elite associations, he still takes Brooks and Noonan seriously. Sigh.
– for the present, he needs to read more.
You probably know Bill Whittle as the host of “Afterburner.” But his essays are second to none. The guy is the closest thing we have to a mentat.
Silent America is brilliant!
Bill Whittle is brilliant.
Where the heck is Andrew Klavan on this list????
This list is a joke, unless you are a posh country club Republican, maybe.
Just my opinion.
With Charles Krauthammer as team captain of the Right’s intellectual Olympians.
I’d rephrase that “the intellectual Olympians of what is right”, since I consider almost every idea put forward by leftists to be little more than intellectual charlatan-ism.
Mark Steyn is a prince among men with an inimitable writing style. VDH goes to the core of any subject he touches. But I’d want to read PJM’s 2 Rogers before some of the people on your list.
David Brooks has been a joke ever since swooning over “the perfect crease in Obama’s pants” when sitting next to him on a couch.
So, who’s the best for the cause? The trash talkers fire up the base. The people on this list reach the reasonable folks on the other side.
Now, I’m ready for the “reasonable folks, are you nuts?” deluge. Expect it to kinda prove my point.
I’d venture that Jon Stewart is one of our most effective spokesman:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-blasts-media-for-wasting-our-time-with-palin-emails/
I’ll bet that one caused some – whatcha macallit? – cognitive dissonance in the peanut gallery.
Michelle Malkin stands practically alone in her ability to disassemble the nuts and bolts of leftist lying.
When speaking, she goes straight into the heart of the matter, whatever the matter (the outrage of the day) is.
Her intelligence is fueled by her authentic white hot anger.
She is wonderful! So is Diana West, you know. Melanie Phillips, and so many others . . .
“…….in recognition of ten authors atop our political pyramid.”
Is the subject here is authors as stated….or is it “wordsmiths”? If it is authors then let’s take a look at their works and name those who should be required reading for every high-schooler in not only in America but in the rest of the civilized world. Two come to mind immediately that perfectly fit that qualification. Thomas Sowell and his book “Basic Economics” and an obvious choice, but not on the list, Mark Levin and his two books “Liberty and Tyranny” and “Ameritopia”. Easily comprehended, rational, factual, and thought provoking material by authors who are capable of such is what will win the day and give us a fighting chance to bring the world back into the realm of sanity. Save the “wordsmithing” for another day. Can you imagine a class assignment of readings from Peggy Noonan? Tell me exactly what that would accomplish.
Can you imagine a class assignment of readings from Peggy Noonan?
Not really.
You’re the first to mention Levin. If all 10 nominees debated Mark Levin — they’d lose. Any ‘list’ of today’s best and brightest conservative writers and thinkers begins with Levin, Limbaugh, Malkin and Coulter (although she briefly lost her way over Romneycare).
No one bats 1000.
Team Captain Victor Davis Hanson
Dennis Prager, Jon Podhoretz, Ann Coulter, David Limbaugh, Mark Steyn, Andrew McCarthy, Michelle Malkin, David Horowitz, Brent Bozell are my top ten.
Second Team:
Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Cal Thomas
I enjoy reading Peggy Noonan and George Will, however like Republicans who have been in Congress too long they have become part of the problem.
David Brooks and Kathleen Parker are jokes. They never fail to see the left’s point-of-view.
We do not need to accept the “Right Wing” label. Sure we are to the right of the Progressives, Obama, Reid, Van Jones and Marx but we are for the most part the CENTER!! The Constitution isn’t “Extreme” or “Right Wing”!!
If I were to refer to this team with a military analogy. Noonan & Brooks would be the Benedict Arnolds…do not trust them. Sowell and especially Hansen with his expertise on military history would be great strategists for the battle. In the foxhole I would want to be with Steyn, Coulter, Malkin, and for laughs…Iowahawk!
Team Captains: The great ones – Mark Steyn, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh, without a doubt. Limbaugh’s and Levin’s columns are virtual.
Brooks, Noonan, [Doubthat]: Out. Dear God, whatever are you thinking?
Malkin, Rahe, Rossett, Glick, Kimball, Coulter, Goldberg, Prager: In.
Krauthammer and Will are leftovers form the ancien regime. Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they exhibit symptoms of the dreaded “Beltway” disease—the result of having attended too many exclusive dinner parties in Washington, DC. They’re almost identical in that they think highly of themselves and like swanning about on teevee. An intellectual Olympian is not one simply because he tells you he is. They used to claim that David Broder was the Dean of the Washington D.C. press corps, when all he looked like to me was a guy with bad breath.
The only reason Brooks and Doubthat are billed as conservatives is so the Left can label anyone to the right of them extremists. Thery’re what a conservative would be if left up to the editor of the NYT. Noonan is like Olympia Snowe: a slightly chastened liberal who can’t be trusted not to vote for an illusion.
Honor List: Richard Fernandez and VDH of PJM.
Looks a bit collectivist.
“Team”… Anyone ever get any management training?
Agree with others, Noonan and Brooks have no place on this list. How about Breitbart? Also agree that Malkin, Coulter, and Limbaugh deserve consideration. Gotta admit I have become a fan of Laura Ingraham as well.
Noonan and Brooks got themselves voted off the island with their embrace of Obama. They bought the image hook, line and sinker and actively promoted him. Crazy.
Anyone who could not spot Obama’s manifest unfitness for the presidency is no conservative but a useful idiot for the Left.
“How about Breitbart?”
While the author didn’t explicitly state that the team members must be living, breathing human beings, it is implied from the context. Otherwise, the team might include the likes of Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, and other luminaries of the past….
We all have our “Top 10″. Sowell, Steyn and Hanson definitely belong. (I don’t know MacDonald.) But Brooks? Noonan? Are you frickin’ kidding me? My own list wouldn’t be complete without Melanie Phillips from the UK, Sarah Honig from Israel, and Daniel Greenfield.
YEA!
Let’s have the Conservative Journalist Olympics.
Minus the beach volley ball. Right?
mystified;
Now that you mention volleyball; I think it would be a horrendous hoot to see Andrea Mitchell, Whoopie Goldberg, Bill Moyers, Chris Matthews, Paul Krugman, and Arianna Huffington, in thongs.
They’d have to induce me into a coma to stop me from laughing.
To paraphrase Andrea Mitchell, you lost the suburban moms with that lineup.
Brooks is still crushing on Barry. Noonan may be disillusioned with her hero now, but poisoned the well using her poison pen on Palin.
Sad thing is Nicole Wallace is a Noonan wannabe and Christopher Buckley is a Brooks wannabe. At least they didn’t make the list.
“DREAM TEAM”?
If you need someone that exposes the Democrats/Liberals for what they are on a daily basis in terms that are very familiar to listeners/readers, then you cannot omit Limbaugh, Podhoretz, Malkin, Bozell, Cavuto, and Hannity.
Victor Davis Hanson is THE most insightful and intuitive writer in America today. And he lives among the very people responsible for the pestilence in his community as if he is still performing his internship.
Basically; Without lying, cheating, stealing, and other criminal activity, there would be no Democrat Party.
Good list, but if I had my choice, Walter Williams would be on it.
It seems that the author is actually “Keith Stone”, the smooooth Keystone Light pitchman, posing as a political intellectual. Seriously, Brooks and Noonan as conservative “leaders”???? Not a chance! Will and Krauthammer are good commentators, but do not stir the primal intellectual forces of the movement.
As serious authors, not just bloggers or columnists, the team should be Sowell, VDH, Goldberg, Lowry, Coulter, Levin, Horowitz, Malkin, Prager, & Steyn.
Some new writers show promise, but they need to have more than one book, or a prodigious level of other seminal output, to make this list. We have a constellation to select from these days. I’d add someone from the “Weekly Standard” stable, but they are so big government conservative, that they consistently lose credibility on the conservative part. (Perhaps they might acquaint themselves with Locke, Montesquieu, & the Founders other than Hamilton?)
If VD Hanson is not the dean, this is not a team :p
You might want to reconsider David Brooks, Peggy Noonan and George F. Will as conservatives. They belong in a list of old-fashioned establishment Republicans, commonly called RINOs.
Barely good get through this soil diaper of a list, posing as a entertaining list of conservative opinion writers. PJM will one day adopt Amy Goodman into the fold as it slowly corrupts into a opinion less web site full of mock conservative drivel unworthy of a glance. Rational argumentation with a full dollop of Orwellian newspeak will not hold back the baying hounds of Godless communists and amphetamine charged Jihadists. This site is getting barely tolerable as the frothing at the mouth media and government meld together into a Borg like monolith usurping true dissenting opinion from the right, and soon maybe real soon the mealy mouth right.
instead of talking gibberish, add to the discusion.
I’d leave Will and Krauthammer on the team only because their audience reach offsets their establishment leanings. Not familiar with Heather McDonald, maybe I should be. My dream team from the original list – Will, Krauthammer,Goldberg, Sowell, Steyn, Hansen. For me, add Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Walter Russell Meade and David Horowitz. Honorable mentions to Roger Kimball, Michael Barone and Bill Whittle.
And David Brooks – are you serious?
Mark Steyn is surely not a squish, he is my favorite name on this list. His killer sense of humour deserves mention, too.
Rush Limbaugh deserves a mention but he’s not a columnist and therefore doesn’t qualify to be on the list. I do want to remind people that not only does he make you laugh, he also read the health care bill. Few people on this planet have that kind of patience! Now, i doubt he did it himself, granted, since I’m sure it took a team of 10 generously paid (this is his nature) basement-dwelling unfortunates to get it done on time. That’s what making $40 million a year can do for you, you can do original research
. I haven’t seen one other opinion writer quote chapter and verse from the bill, much to the embarrassment of Obama and his cronies. Sometimes Rush is a bit vulgar for my taste, but he’s a real fighter and we need him on our team.
I love Bill Whittle’s writing and videos – his old, lengthly essays were real classics. I wish he still did those, but I’ll bet the videos are a lot more fun to produce
. He definitely deserves to be on a dream team.
I have a soft spot for Peggy Noonan even though she’s backslid at times. I think she’s too close to a lot of Beltway types, which is understandable. But take her with a grain of salt and she’s a great read, often making points that need to be made and understood. I think she helps us understand the national mood, even when it’s not totally on our side. And that can help us win.
D
David H. Dennis- Rush does in fact write a column- For his “Limbaugh Letter,” which comes out once a month. He also writes articles for that publication. He is also gifted in writing. So, IMHO, he does INDEED belong on this list.
As a general answer to the original post, I would also include David Azzerad of the Heritage Foundation, (As well as pretty much anyone else there).
Oh dear, oh dear….
I am definitely not a conservative. George Will and the honorable Krauthammer seem, to me at least, the only vestiges of the kind of conservative that I kinda liked.
Take Steyn, for instance.
The man completely ignores the fact that multiculturalism, as theory&practice, was NEVER premised on the notion that all cultures are the same. I am not a multiculturalist but his distortion of the matter is too flagrant to go unnoticed. And it is not a matter of ideological commitment. Its simple intellectual honesty!!!
Jonah Goldberg’s knows his liberalism as well as I know the migratory patterns of lemmings. Liberal philosophers, from Mill to Rawls and Nozick were never afraid to be ideological. How could they?? Politics is by nature ideological. Conservatives have accused liberals of being idealistic (a form of delusional dogmatism) and liberals have accused conservatives of being retrograde dogmatists. So what??? In a sense, they are both right.
Notwithstanding her shriekiness and occasional bouts of insanity – as occurred last week when she over-reacted to Ms Saul’s incomplete answer to the execrable, grossly dishonest Soptic “Romney killed my wife” commercial – I agree that Coulter should be on any list. She wields a sharp knife and can be a scholar when she wants to be. She was almost alone in understanding who needed to be supported if we are serious about replacing Obama and restoring fiscal sanity and America’s place in the world.
John Hinderaker of Power Line is very much underrated but he is on my list. And any list which contains Brooks and Noonan is in need of correction. Those two lightweights fell hook line and sinker for Obama The Messiah.
Read through the list and can only agree with maybe 2 or 3 of your choices. The rest leave me wondering WTF?
My curiosity is aroused however. Is the author’s medication over the counter, by prescription only, or does it come out of a bottle and have the distinct odor of an alcoholic beverage?
another: instead of talking gibberish, add to the discusion.
Have you always been a comment nazi?
OK, let’s “add to the discussion” then, shall we?
George Will? Isn’t this the guy who claimed the SCOTUS ruling on Obamacare was a “victory” for conservatives, thinks gun control is a great idea, defends Richard Lugar (aka Obama’s favorite republican), and called Herman Cain a “charlatan”?!?
Heather Mac Donald? She doesn’t have the following and therefore the influence the article credits her with. Doesn’t mean she’s not a good at what she does – only that she has not really yet ‘arrived’, for lack of a better term.
Steyn – definitely would make my list of influential conservative columnists!
Peggy Noonan? Seriously? Seriously? She VOTED FOR OBAMA the last time around!!! Seriously?
Thomas Sowell – also on the list with Steyn. Excellent mind!
Victor Davis Hanson – keeping good company with Steyn and Sowell on the list but not at their level yet as far as I’m concerned. Still, usually a good read.
David Brooks? Mr. Pants Crease himself?!?!? Again…seriously?!? How the heck did he get on the list?
Goldberg and Lowry – definitely considered qualified for my list, but still not convinced at this point. Maybe in a few more years….
And then we have Krauthammer….am I the only one who remembers the disdain he’s expressed for Palin and the Tea Party types, and the outright hatchet job he did on O’Donnell? Krauthammer will only support the ‘right’ kind of republican, ones that bear a strong resemblence to RINO’s…all in the name of ‘electability’, and core beliefs be damned.
The RINO’s included on this list undermines the entire thrust of the article.
Oh, and who exactly elected you as comment monitor?
Scott, I preferred the substantive response over the snarky one.
Mark Levin. He is truly the greatest of all time. Whether it is his radio program, written articles, interviews, or speeches, The Great One earns that title day after day. I agree with some of the others that many on the list are inconsistent conservatives or flat out liberal minded, big government RINO’s. America has had enough of the Ruling class elite whether in office or in media.
I’ll give David Brooks credit where it’s due. The man knows a pant crease when he sees it. In fact, he must have become so mesmerized by that delightful crease, he didn’t notice that the Presidential candidate wearing the pants was a truthfully-flexible, anti-American, Marxist radical.
I know George Will and Charles Krauthammer have been criticized by many as RINO types. Some of that is fair and some not. I think especially in Will’s case, he gets too focused on the idea of practical majority governance and electibility, that he forgets that without some ideological purity, we’ve gotten a steady stream of Republicans going along, leading to ever growing government. Sort of like saying it’s good enough to slow from 75 or 55 as we drive over the edge of the cliff. It’s always something of a balance, but the smaller government Republicans are way up in the air, and need to fight more for their ideas now. This is the time. If not now, the ideas that created America could all come crashing down and be lost, and the personal and collective fixes will be so much more painful and chaotic.
Peggy Noonan? Good writer, a bit spotty on the ideas, in my mind. She’s more PR than ideology.
How about Scalia? He’s not a columnist or a pudit, but what he writes will live forever. How about British MP Daniel Hannan, from the world of radio, Mike Rosen (my favorite radio pundit), Mark Levin, four fabulous women, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, Mona Charon, or PJTV’s Bill Whittle (inspiring videos!) and from Hollywood, David Mamet?
Ummmm, am I overlooking something? What about Glenn Reynolds?
Charles Krauthammer then George Will. That’s where I quit reading. Who came up with this crap?
so, instead of talking gibberish, add to the discusion.
This reminds me of a meme dating back to 2003:
“In 2003, this Blogger defined who were the Four Horsemen of the Right Blogosphere who caused the most damage to the Left.
At the time, these Four did much damage:
Plague: Steven Den Beste
Famine: Charles Johnson
War: Andrew Sullivan
Death: Glenn Reynolds”
See here for an updated listing: http://valley-of-the-shadow.blogspot.com/2010/02/four-horsemen-of-ablogalypse-2010.html
Also, shouldn’t Beitbart get an in memorium listing, or something?
I agree. Brooks and Noonan should be out. Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin should be in. Anyone who claims that a rookie senator whom he had barely met would be good president because of the crease in his pant leg has no credibility as a critical thinker.
Malkin and Coulter saw Obama for the fraud that he is right from the start. They didn’t drink the Kool-Aide, instead the stood firm against Democrats’ extremist policies even back following the 2008 election when beltway pundits were comparing Obama to the nation’s greatest presidents before he had served a day in office.
Mark Levin may be the best writer of all, but he isn’t a columnist.
Scuse me? Loose Noonan. Add Roger Kimball. And Ed Driscoll is no nose picker, either.
And increasingly, Glenn Reynolds is becoming a force to be reckoned with. Which brings us to the whole Reason crowd. Some very excellent thinkers there.
Anyone who picks out Presidents because of the crease in their pants, and admits it in public, can NEVER be called conservative. Or worth reading for that matter. Brooks is a joke; he made himself one.
I am amazed at how many of the commentators here have never read Heather McDonald. She is one of the best foot soldiers on the Right. She has amassed all the facts and figures that proves conclusively all the theories espoused by the old Conservatives are true.
Did I miss Coulter and Malkin on this list.
Two of the most important, outspoken and attractive spokespeople for the conservative voice.
Did I miss Palin on this list.
A true king maker.
Attractive is a prerequisite for being a conservative thinker …?
Poor Charles Krauthammer. Not to mention Stephen Hawking.
I’m glad I ain’t the only one who missed Michelle Malkin on this list.Seems we have an embarassment of riches,don’t it?
from Canada, but he’s an American citizen now.
According to Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steyn:
That doesn’t make it true, of course, but in the absence of contrary information, I have to lean toward this information.
And why is that relevant anyway? No one said the “Dream Team” had to all be American citizens. Conservatism transcends national boundaries.
was all for the disengagement fiasco in 2005, and bashed Sarah Palin in 2008 and 2010, and ever since then, too.
was very snooty about Palin, who is just as smart as he, and maybe smarter.
She was right about Obama’s “death-panels,” and he said there were none.
I’d dump Noonan from this list in favor of James Taranto, of the WSJ’s “Best of the Web.” Taranto, like Steyn, has the gift of inserting sharp wit and humor into very serious subjects.
Brooks is useless.
Oh come on. Peggy Noonan!? I’ll grant that she writes well and as useful as an observer. It’s the conservative part I have trouble with. That, and any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. A conservative simply would not vote for Obama in 2008. Period. Third party, I understand. But Obama? Give me a break.
Same with Brooks.
This is not your father’s National Review. I’ll buy Jonah, but not Rich.
The indispensable James Taranto should be listed.
George Will needs to be excommunicated unless he takes back supporting Romney from the beginning, supporting the drug war, and calling for banning football, among other things.
Will has his moments… few… and he never stretches a double into a triple. A solid player I suppose but not an all-star in any way other than longevity. The conservative our opponents love…
David Brooks is no Conservative.
Conservatives are anti-abortion. Brooks is pro-choice.
Conservatives oppose gay marriage. Brooks supports gay marriage.
Conservatives espouse smaller government. Brooks believes this idea is outmoded.
Conservatives are skeptical of John McCain and oppose Barack Obama, whose Senate voting record was one of the most liberal. Brooks loves John McCain, but loves Barack Obama even more (much more).
It’s true that Brooks, in supporting Israel, became a neo-con, but that only places him in the same box as liberal Democrat (now Independent) Joe Lieberman.
Don’t you first need to be a conservative before you can make the conservative dream team? Take a poll of conseravtives and see where Brooks ranks in terms of columnists that conservatives love to read. He would not even register.
Further — cuz I forgot — re “Brooks is no Conservative”.
Conservatives support the right to bear arms. Brooks supports gun control.
Noonan, Brooks, pfffft! Not on my team! they’ve thrown too many games just so their elite neoProgressive friends would smile at them at NYC cocktail parties. I’d give their spots to Dinesh D’Souza, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, and of course…Ann Coulter. And I wish PJ O’Rourke would kick the booze habit and get back in the game.
You include Brooks and Noonan, and leave out the only one approaching Krauthammer in intellect: Dennis Prager.
The author’s list is in no way definitive, merely his favorites. I find only a few of mine are on it, so I invite all to check out the following: Daniel Greenfield (Sultan Knish), Robert Godwin (Gaddad Bob), Jack Cashill, Steve McCann, Robert Ringer, David Horowitz, Ben Shapiro, Erick Ericson, Dennis Prager, Andy McCarthy, David P. Goldman (Spengler) in addition to old favorites, Mark Steyn, Victor David Hanson, Charles Krauthammer, etc. mentioned above. Obviously we “right wing radicals” have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to commentary.
When do we get to put Richard Fernandez on this list? For my money, he’s the best read on the Internet.
I don’t think anyone can be pure 100% conservative, but Sowell, Hanson, the Limbaugh brothers and Steyn are good examples of being just about perfect. Will is spending too much time now reaching across the aisle to Democraps, mainly with telling Romney to issue his tax returns to please Obama’s handlers and wanting to ban pro football. Dr. K. does that once in awhile but bounces back to the conservative side. His columns may go the wrong way once in a while, but he’s solid conservative on Fox News’ All Star panel. Brooks and Noonan? Please, you’re humoring me, right?
Walter Williams
Just mentioning…
Daniel Greenfield – aka Sultan Knish
Good list but take off Brooks and add young talent like Ben Shapiro, Dana Loesch and SE Cupp. Also the king of all conservative media today is Glenn Beck. He has made conservatism cool and hip. Only with Beck can you get a lecture on George Washington, the Islamic Caliphate and various pop culture references all in a 30 min monologue. Beck cannot be ignored on the right.
Take off Brooks and Noonan, replace with John Hayward (@Doc_0), Bill Whittle, or Iowahawk. I’d prefer John Stossel any day over Mr. Swoons over Creased Pants.
Brooks? Wow, you embarrassed yourself. You have lost the right to opine on this. NEXT!
Mark Levin is one of those who pushed all this “Islamic Nation Building” with it’s Petraeus winning Islamic Hearts-and-Minds, anti-American stupidity, and what a mess is the direct result of this. THE DIRECT RESULT! Levin can not logically, nor morally, complain about symptoms from a disease that he promoted.
when Donald Trump had the audacity in Levin’s eyes to bring up Obama’s highly questionable, to say the least, constitutional eligibility to be President, Levin hollered (he always seems to holler), “He demeans our movement”. If Levin does not have the fiber to take on the matter himself, if he considers it a “distraction” and “unproductive, or fears being called a “birther”, then fine, he should just go sit in the back of the room and be a REFM, a quiet REMF. As George S. Patton said, “Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.
For someone who professes such great love for the United States Constitution, Mark Levin seems to have an unnatural aversion and disdain for one of it’s most important parts, Article 2, Section 1. He seems to believe that it is an obscene section not to be mentioned in public least the heavens open and bolts of lightning strike. “This fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women, but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes a man.” (Mark Twain).
I also must question Mark Levin’s professed love for Alexis de Tocqueville, which seems very selective, as last I heard anyway, he has to this day expressed no regrets for having given his enthusiastic support to the Bush/Rice mission to transform the Muslim Middle East into a bastion of “democracy” via Afcrapistan as well as Iraq. Perhaps he might take the time to acquaint himself with what Alexis de Tocqueville said about Islam and about protracted wars.
Give Brooks and Noonan the plank and replace with Coulter and Hugh Hewitt. Columnists, however, no longer steer the USS Starboard. The ship wheel is navigated by talk radio and web aggregators, the above columnists simply ride and amplify the wake.
The best 10 conservative “columnists” are all dead now. However their words live on if you just take the time to read them.
If you can count Heather MacDonald as a columnist (her forte is longer form articles) then you need to include Walter Russell Mead in the conversation as well. His narrative on the collapse of the blue social model alone is worth the price of admission.
William F. Buckley
Several years passed he is still the best writer and able to define what Conservative truly means and how to achieve its goals. There is a huge vacuum in his absence and Conservatism has begun fracturing in a mad scramble to find itself.
Most people think they are conservatives and are correct, they are conservatives with a small c.
To be Conservative, takes more than criticizing those that think differently or refuse to drink cool aid of the month, or writing prose on a blog. The Conservative party has become a caricature of itself and will end badly, which means the USA will end badly.
Romney / Ryan…seriously..?? The joke is on America, and U.S. taxpayer the punchline.
The Republican party as well as every one of its allies could not produce a, dead on the mark, powerful, memorable, impactful attack commercial against Obama if their lives depended on it.
That’s why Romney is nosing diving in the Rasmussen likely voter poll.
Conservative columnists have totally failed to realize this fact of political life: You’ve got to attack.
Obama has a well oiled machine, pumping out ads like they’re jumping out of the white hot barrel of a German MP-40 sub-machine gun. In the Obama war room, it’s Sept. 1, 1939 every day.
Romney has filled his team with political hacks who couldn’t construct an attack ad if their lives depended on it. His super pacs are equally impotent and clueless.
That the Republican party is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory keeps me up at night blogging, trying to get the Romney campaign finally to go on the attack. It is so ironic that Obama has a treasure trove of attack targets, and the Romney people merrily go about countering Obama’s attack ads, and leaving it at that.
The election is being lost, and not even the brilliant Paul Ryan can save Romney from his thoroughly screwed up campaign.
When you hear the fat lady sing, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’ve heard that Romney is actually restricted in how much money he can spend before the official nomination in Tampa.
I also believe he is consistently outpacing fundraising by Obama – but is not outspending him.
The math at that point is pretty simple, he’s building a war chest that gets unleashed when it counts most while Obama is appearing increasingly desperate to get his message out before the tsunami of Romney ads overwhelm him.
The danger here, of course, is that perceptions once formed are difficult to change and the Romney camp may be in danger of allowing Obama to define him at a very early stage. If so, then this will be difficult to reverse without a mountain of money.
Oh, and Romney has plenty of money….
Obama, on the other hand, may be spending what he’s got prematurely and may be short of funds when the Romney counterpunch lands in September and October. Obama may not have the funding to counteract negative ads right before the election.
Sad to say, there are a lot of people who at least profess they haven’t made up their minds until the very end of the campaign season, so those kinds of ads will be most effective with that kind of voter so Romney may be onto something with that strategy.
After all, Obama and Romney supporters have already made up their minds and nothing is going to change that, so Romney has to get the as yet undecided voter in his corner.
Also, as far as doing a number on their opponents, I think Gingrich and a few others who went down in flames during the Republican primary would disagree with your assertions that the Romney crew ads are impotent and clueless…lol.
If both of those theories are correct, then the proof will come out after the convention in Tampa and we will see the Romney money machine start grinding Obama and his record into dust for the remaining time between then and November.
I’m also concerned about Romney’s give away of this election. As a pro-choice Romney supporter, I think it would help if he took a double win stance on the abortion issue.
As a Licensed Professional Counselor who has helped many females and their families decide the outcome of an unplanned pregnancy, I’m very concerned with Mitt Romney’s refusal to discuss what he’d do about the legality of abortion. His behavior reminds me of the “Don’t Talk” rule common to alcoholic families, because they doubt their ability to solve the problems they refuse to discuss.
What he and others don’t realize is that there is a double win way to view this issue. Since thinking people on both sides of the issue want abortions to decrease, and thinking people on both sides of it realize that the best way to accomplish that is through education, why not channel our energy in that direction?
Many people who are morally opposed to abortion still believe in keeping them legal for pragmatic reasons that have nothing to do with the morality of the act. Those reasons include, but are not limited to:
1. Financial costs:
a. Cost of health care – fewer women in ERs means lower health care costs for all of us.
b. Lower related costs such as welfare, etc.
c. Better use of law enforcement personnel, who are already spread too thin.
2. Image of elected officials:
a. The law would have more credibility – control over one’s body laws have a high rate of disobedience. (They conflict with personal identity.)
b. Separation of church and state is more consistent with the founding principles of our country.
c. They will be seen as kinder toward women, and more respecting of their judgment.
The above individuals deserve tremendous respect, as they have their own religious view, to which they are entitled in a country that allows freedom of religion, but are open minded and open hearted enough to trust the goodness in human nature and realize that women sometimes make this decision for very morally responsible and loving reasons. They’re willing to admit they don’t understand everything. That humility is very commendable and honest.
That leads to the conclusion that the motivations of opponents of legal choice, despite what they say, are not religious based. Religion is the “front” for what is really going on. They are actually motivated by unresolved mental health issues:
Unresolved Family Issues
Loneliness
Sexuality
Religion
So they project their feelings of unbornness onto aborted fetuses instead of fixing their own lives. I’d like to see them heal instead. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everybody outside of the womb gave emotional birth to themselves, instead of reaching their death beds feeling like they never lived, which is so often the case?
It would be extremely dangerous to allow the law of our land to driven by unresolved mental health issues, but if abortions become illegal, it will be.
Diana L. Carter, LPC
Spengler and Roger Kimball and Mona Charen were all left out.
Good Grief. NRO, Weekly Standard, Michelle Malkin and the whole stable at HotAir, David Limbaugh, Ann Althouse, Pamela Gellar just to name a few.
I almost stopped reading when I saw George Will mentioned. He’s not a conservative. At least he hasn’t been one in three decades or so.
Jonah Goldberg is the star of conservative columnists. His best stuff is timeless. And he is still young. Wow!
He’s the one to watch.
Brooks? Noonan? Ann coulter is our street fighter, and is usually proven correct. Pat Buchanan is our crazy uncle, but he has been around for well over 50 years and has been ahead of his time in his predictions.
I respectfully disagree about Noonan. That traitorous female dog is no true conservative.
I get you want to throw a wide net but come on. Leaving Michael Barone off this list and including Brooks make it very difficult to take seriously.
@Max LeCompte I have to ask. Are you a troll? I suppose Reagan and Buckley are not conservative either?
Didn’t read all the comments, so someone else might have said this … but: Niall Ferguson is a major talent. He just demolished O and lib pretensions in Newsweek, of all places.
Looking across the pond, I’d add James Delingpole to the list.
I would add Dennis Prager as one of the most effective columnists to dissecting liberalism. Ann C is too busy throwing, “poopy balls” at liberals.
“His great foible is that his technique is so polished and vocabulary so vast, at times his shots can go over our heads;” Someone has to take the place of the great William F Buckley!
Great morning read. However may I suggest two other conservative names? Pat Buchanan and Jeffrey Lord from The American Spectator. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Will are old school.
Brooks? You must be joking. Noonan went over to the dark side in 2008 — havn’t read anything of hers since. George Will is so 80′s, I wouldn’t even call him a conservative any more. VDH, Sowell, Krauthammer, Goldberg, Steyn — right on. Lowry dropped off the list thanks to his mis-handling of the Repub nomination.
To the list I would add Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin and PJM’s own Roger L. Simon.
Never heard of Heather MacDonald.
roger simon – not so much. After the batman movie shooting, simon immediately got on the anti-gun bandwagon.
I prefer the longer version of Rich Lowry (with Ramesh Ponnuru)on American exceptionalism. A keeper:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/article/?q=M2FhMTg4Njk0NTQwMmFlMmYzZDg2YzgyYjdmYjhhMzU=
I have no idea how David Brooks makes any conservative’s list of favorites. And, I’m perhaps equally puzzled about the inclusion of Peggy Noonan. Give me Andy McCarthy – who’s for several years been alerting us to the biggest security threats the nation has faced since the 1940′s – and Ann Coulter. We need columnists willing to put some bite in their words; not those trying to appeal to some on the left-leaning fence.
All good choices, but one of the obviously missing who, by virtue of his unreserved and surprisingly plain spoken critiques, belongs at least among the top ten is John Derbyshire. He’s an irascible burr on the liberals’ chairs.
He’s also a racist. Look it up. He criticize Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin for being “low brow conservatism,” then goes on to pen a column about how blacks, in general, i.e. Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, are evil people. If you agree with him, get the f out of the movement.
You certainly write as if you know what you’re writing about. Your logic and the elegance of your writing style make me embarrassed to have posted on this venue. You’re quite right, I don’t belong here – just cannot meet your standards, and I accept your admonition, with pleasure.
None of them are pro-life.
Noonan is a bad choice. Brooks is an idiotic choice.
This list is laughable with the exceptions of VDH, Mark Steyn, & Heather MacDonald whom I have not heard of. One conservative pundit who is very good, but seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth is Kyle-Anne Shiver. I miss reading her column. Melanie Morgan is also very good & a huge supporter of the military through the Move America Forward organization. There are many left off this list who have already been mentioned by others so I won’t rename them again. Coulter though has gone off her onion over the last year & will look like a laughing stock if RINO Romney loses in November. Coulter is a female Frank Zappa. Always out to prod & provoke her audience. As someone else already said above Coulter doesn’t write, she performs.
Disagreed – this is a fantastic list, though I’d swap out Noonan and Brooks for someone else, maybe Gutfeld (for proving conservatives can be funny) and someone at Breitbart. If you haven’t read Hanson, Steyn, or MacDonald, good lord, go out and read them. MacDonald is the least known, but she’s a brilliant statistician and sociologist who fights liberals with their own tools and numbers.
I thought this was the conservative dream team, not the moderate, occasionally RHINO team; so why G. Will and C. Krauthammer?
Sorry Kyle, you destroy your whole premise with the addition of David Brooks. Anyone who has ever supported Barrack Obama is, by definition, not a conservative.
This is a CINO mentally masturbating to garner attention. One can hardly disagree with Sowell, Steyn, and Hanson, but Peggy Noonan, Krouthammer, Will, and Brooks? Why not include David Frum (Frump), Conner Frydork, and other Russ Douthat. If you are looking for conservatism, stick to the first three, plus editorial writers from the NY Post, City Journal, and American Thinker. If you are looking for paeans to Obama (e.g. Brooks’ “Obama’s creased pants”), summit meetings with Obama (at Will’s house), or “x” Conservatism (Come Back Conservatism, Wall Mart Conservatism, Compassionate Conservatism) then select the CINOs.
Brooks is not, and never has been, anywhere close to being a Conservative.
He’s a moderate Democrat, and Obama sycophant, with a day job that requires him to pose as the token Republican at the Times. He generally fails to pose convincingly and his liberalism shines through.
The two who must be discarded are Peggy Noonan and David Brooks — two conservative RINOs if ever there were any. Replace them with Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, please. Or any other number of excellent writers.
How on Earth can David Brooks and Peggy Noonan be on this list? A couple of others are debatable, but at least justifiable.
Brooks and Noonan have no place in the top 50.
Noonan and Brooks are lightweights. Replace them with Theodore Dalrymple and James Bowman. I also love David Warren.
This list is great, but George Will, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks? Seriously?
The list lost all credibility with those three included…
Lose Brooks (you have got to be kidding!), Noonan (absolutely a fabulous writer but 2 of her best pals are Chris Matthew’s wife and Kathleen Parker – need I say more?), and Will (who can take any simple subject and make it complex).
I’d add Malkin, Clarice Feldman of American Thinker and the gang over at I Own the World.com. They should get a place just for their amazing graphics and irreverant and often bawdy sense of humor. Also, Ace (Robert Bluey) of Spades is terrific.
Brooks and Noonan’s “big ideas” are based in a pro big-government, pro social-engineering ideology. Call that ideology anything you want, but it’s not “conservative.”
I’d like to put in a good word for Jay Cost and James Taranto who often approaches an issue from an angle I hadn’t considered.
Noonan lost her footing after 9-11 and never regained it. She made a fool of herself over Obama. Brooks is a NY Times version of a conservative. Both get it right sometimes, but neither deserves inclusion on this list. George Will is often a cipher. Great writer, though.
I agree with those who think Richard Fernandez is brilliant.
Heather MacDonald? I don’t agree. Besides, she published a piece this year taking Trayvon Martin’s side. Normal conservatives are very pro-2nd Amendment.