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The Spectacle Blog
The Washington Post launched a new blog today, Right Now: Inside the conservative movement and the Republican Party with David Weigel. I’ve been friends with Dave for more than 8 years, and since I’ve known him longer than most people in Washington I’m often asked some variation on the question What’s up with Weigel these days? Is he a liberal now?
The short answer is no; if I had to put a label on his views, I’d say he’s a left-libertarian (though I don’t think his ideological convictions are very deep, and they have a tendency to shift — he was much more conservative when I first met him than he is now). The thing to understand when reading his reporting, though, is that he’s sympathetic to most conservatives and libertarians but tends to strongly dislike both partisan Republicans and fringe types. Because he’s so snarky about, say, Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin or birth certificate conspiracy theorists, people often don’t realize that he really does like most of the people you’ll find at a Tea Party rally, and agrees with them on a lot of issues. When he was downsized from the Reason staff, it was really a stroke of genius on the part of the lefty editors at The Washington Independent to hire him to cover the right; no one is better-positioned to explain to liberals how libertarians and conservatives think in an intelligent and entertaining way. He built a following from basically nothing (TWI was a fairly new and obscure publication when he arrived), and the Post was very smart to hire him.
A lot of people have been wondering if WaPo will launch a similar blog covering the left. I’d love to see that — but will they be able to find a liberal who hates the Democrats and the far left to write it?
J.P. Freire| 4.6.10 @ 10:46PM
But Mickey Kaus already writes for Slate!
martin j smith| 4.7.10 @ 8:00AM
be suspscious of the MSM at all times. When a MSM uses a "conservative" be wary of " Greeks baring gifts."
This is one area that needs further exploration meaning: How to spot phony propangada when it is out there for all to see.
Lene Johansen | 4.7.10 @ 9:33AM
I think you left one important fact out of your piece John, and that is that Dave is a reporter. In a city full of opiners, it is very valuable to have someone who goes places, talks to people, and write about what he learned, rather than sitting behind a desk thinking he knows what is going on. Dave does that, which is why I often use him as a source when I write about the Conservative movement for overseas publications.
Robert Stacy McCain | 4.7.10 @ 10:01AM
Ditto what Lene said. He really is an excellent reporter. Assuming the WaPo gives him time to do reporting -- that is to say, if their demand for blog content isn't so heavy as to glue him to his computer 24/7 -- he'll run circles around Ezra Klein.
Also, Dave is not a total douchebag.
Pingback| 4.7.10 @ 10:17AM
A. Because He Blogrolled Me : The Other McCain links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Matthew Vadum | 4.7.10 @ 3:26PM
The Washington Post’s hiring of blogger extraordinaire Dave Weigel is a rare acknowledgment from the mainstream media that the Right is winning.
For the record, most of the reporters at the Washington Independent are highly ideological intellectually lazy lapdogs who routinely give free passes to the Obama administration, the organized crime syndicate ACORN, and radical labor unions but Weigel is generally clear-headed and in his time there was one of the more fair-minded reporters.
He's thorough and does what needs to be done to get the story.