So, the latest New York Times OP/ED page conservative affirmative action case has his debut editorial for the paper, and what is his trenchant analysis?

It's that the Republicans should have nominated Richard Milhaus Cheney as their presidential nominee in 2008.

I guess that's because Cheney is such a photogenic and friendly dude, whether talking about his penis (top picture), or simply snarling at the American public (bottom).

Of course this is not really what the author believes. He wanted Cheney to run because he would have been beaten like a baby seal while showing how the right wing orthodoxy needs to be repackaged: It's simply link bait, as Froomkin notes.

He wants people to read him, so Douthat says something outrageous, and finishes with, "And when he went down to a landslide loss, the conservative movement might - might! - have been jolted into the kind of rethinking that's necessary if it hopes to regain power."

No. Simply put, he is being a tool to get buzz, and it increasingly appears that the Republican Neocons are simply some sort of truly subversive performance art group.

I miss William Safire, who while right wing, had a brain, and could actually string together words in an attractive way.

Between Tierney, Kristol, and now Douthat, it appears that the sure sign that you are really, really, stupid is getting a regular Times OP/ED slot.

Yes, I know, I am really describing him being an asshole, not stupid, but his argument boils down to, "We should have nominated Dick Cheney, and we would have lost much better."

That's Doug "The Stupidest Motherf^%$er on the Planet" Feith stupid, and the New York Times already has a surfeit of stupid among their regular columnists, with Maureen Dowd, who covers politics like she is a junior high schooler dissing a classmates choice in shoes.

Still it appears that but it appears that Andrew Rosenthal, the Editorial Page Editor, feels that they need some more stupid.

Cross posted from 40 Years in the Desert.