So you provide no example, you just quote another person making the same unsubstantiated assertion about Krugman that you made.

And please: the argument against Goldberg’s work is exactly the same as the argument against Kristol’s work, already expressed by Paul Wells above:

” jwl, what’s wrong with Kristol is not that he’s conservative. I know no serious commentator who questions the wisdom of keeping a conservative columnist spot at the Times, after William Safire spent 30 years making that spot one of the most important in American journalism. I know of nobody who’s suggesting that Kristol be replaced with a liberal.

The problem with Kristol is that he’s a dire writer who was wrong at every turn this year; that he made big obvious factual mistakes all the time; that his prose is appalling; that he self-evidently couldn’t be arsed to do a serious job with the amazing gift he’d been given. He is an embarrassment, least of all to himself, and most of all to Arthur Sulzberger, who personally selected one of the worst columnists in his newspaper’s modern history.”

The difference between Kristol and Goldberg – Goldberg would have to drastically improve his work just to achieve wrongness.

And calling Liberal Fascism a “history” book is just adorable. Really, it includes such incisive “reasoning” as ‘Hitler was a vegetarian, just like many liberals!’ and ‘Here’s 3 known gay Nazis – liberals love gay people!’ Obviously I’m paraphrasing, but these arguments are actually in the book.

You know what? Goldberg’s probably the best the right wing has at this point. I take it all back – please, please, please hoist him into real prominence. Let Jonah freakin’ Goldberg take the helm of conservatism.

Oh, and Palin 2012!

So you’ve got nothing – no examples. Counting Google hits is the lamest argument ever.

And let’s be clear: everyone, including Krugman, makes mistakes. Some technical, sometimes a slipped reference, sometimes failed logic. I’m not claiming the man is perfect.

But nobody – nobody – has been as consistently, honkingly, gong-show, ah-ooo-gah! wrong as Kristol. The man is a walking joke. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t even believe his own tripe, he’s a dedicated propagandist who uses his NYT column to advance the Republican agenda.

I’ve read parts of Liberal Fascism, including the title to Chapter Two: “Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left”. And Goldberg does say a number of times that lefties aren’t necessarily Nazis, which was generous of him. But while he may not *equate* Nazis and liberals, he most certainly does *compare* them extensively, using his trademark combination of lazy-assed research and fatuous arguments.

It’s Coulter-quality agitprop masquerading as an intellectual effort, written by a man who’s simply not capable of honest intellectual exercise.

I think the difference between Buckley, Kristol et al. and Goldberg is that the former were at least capable of polishing conservative turds with enough erudition and sophistry to sound respectable. Goldberg’s shortcomings as a writer and pseudo-intellectual lay bare the emptiness of his arguments.

I say again – if you want morons like Palin and Goldberg as standard-bearers for conservatism, nothing would make me happier.

By the way, Dave Niewert actually knows, you know, stuff about fascism. He writes about it extensively on his blog (http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/) if you want to actually learn something. If you’d rather surround yourself with conservative feel-good wankerism, leave your brain in neutral and enjoy Goldberg.

Scott F

I think most Repubs are thinking good riddance. Buckley was a big champion of McCain last spring but when things went south for McCain/Repubs, Buckley bails and comes out for Obama. I think Buckley was worried about not getting invitations to all the fashionable NY/Washington dinner parties so he decided to pile on a working class woman to justify his Benedict Arnold behaviour. He’s a real class act.

Heh – I agree, jwl: I think it was a rat deserting a sinking ship. Of course, if the scales have truly fallen from Buckley’s eyes, he may have good things to contribute.

Disavowing Palin became trendy almost immediately, especially among those not busy hyperventilating at her ability to deliver a bitchy one-liner. “Piling on” Palin was appropriate the very second it was clear she lacked the wherewithal to be VP, much less POTUS.

“so obviously he’s disqualified for the NYT slot!”

Jack M

I think he should be disqualified from NYT conservative slot because he’s not really conservative, more of a Rockefeller Republican, but that probably makes him perfect for the position.

KRUGMAN EATS OKRENT FOR LUNCH!

I’m not cheering for Palin in 2012. We’ve have enough of this circus and we’re all suffering for it. People like jwl most of all, but our media to a great extent. It’s going to be increasingly difficult for them to shift focus on more substantive issues while the race to the bottom is far from over and while it remains relatively cheap and easy to fill up our newsholes with these irrational “conservatives.”

Charity demands that all good people demand much, much better from our ruling elites.

How about “Wurzelbacher/Hasselbeck 2012.”

Gee, I’m starting to like this idea…

Krystol is a “neo-con”, not a conservative. He is a Red Diaper Baby, the spawn of an actual Bolshevist. He is an “entryist” who has infiltrated the conservative movement with a view to destroying it, as are the rest of the two-degrees-of-PNAC crowd. He holds liberal social views, supports big government, and likes war a lot – this is not conservative.

Paul Wells knows everything I just wrote, yet persists in referring to him as a “conservative” who, er, gets his facts wrong. Not cricket.

All I need to know about who wears the pants in American politics I learned from a ten second youtube clip of Kristol referring to the recently departed CIA director as a “crybaby” on national TV. Not the type of thing you say about a guy who ran the world’s biggest spy operation – unless you are extremely secure in your position in life.

I can see the point of genuine conservatives (whatever that means….as a liberal with very conservative habits, I don’t have to worry about that so much) wanting to distance themselves from neo-conservatives (who are in fact radical nationalists and bizarre quasi-Maoist ideologues) but I think it’s frankly a little late in the game.

As always, Alice in Wonderland provides a good summary of political thinking:

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

John O’Sullivan