Conservative Kristol Pens Last NYT Column, Reportedly Heading to the Washington Post

Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress at 7:37 AM on January 26, 2009.

Last November, Weekly Standard editor and prominent neoconservative William Kristol was asked if he wanted to renew his contract as a weekly columnist with The New York Times. "I'm ambivalent," Kristol said. "I dunno. You gotta talk to them about that. It's been a lot of work and I'm kinda stretched a little thin. I'll see."

It appears Kristol has resolved his ambivalence. At the conclusion of his Times column today, an editor's note reads, "This is William Kristol's last column." However, Kristol's last Times scribe is unlikely to be a memorable one, as he meandered back and forth (as he usually does) about the superiority of conservatism, without really explaining why. For example:

Conservatives have been right more often than not -- and more often than liberals -- about most of the important issues of the day: about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family. Conservative policies have on the whole worked -- insofar as any set of policies can be said to "work" in the real world.

But it appears that Kristol's tirades against all things progressive have found a new home. Politico's "Playbook" reports this morning that "he's now beginning a monthly column in The Washington Post." Aside from the monotony of Kristol's opinion pieces, it might be worth reminding the Post's editors and readers what they're in for: factual errors. Some examples:

- Trying to defend criticism of John McCain, Kristol inaccurately wrote that there was "no basis" for the claim that McCain was not in a "cone of silence" when pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama at a Sattleback Church forum last year. In fact, the Times itself reported the opposite.

- Kristol once wrote that "he could not find a recent primary in which the candidate who would go on to win the nomination lost by as big a margin as Barack Obama lost by (41 points) in West Virginia." Yet Mitt Romney won Utah with 90 percent of the vote.

Kristol also falsely claimed that Obama had attended a church service at Trinity United when he had not and attributed a quote to the wrong person. Given Kristol's history with the Times, perhaps the Post will do its readers a service and assign an extra fact checker to his work.

Tagged as: new york times, kristol, washington post

Benjamin J. Armbruster is a Research Associate for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.