I read a fair number of liberal-leaning blogs, my favorite being that of Ezra Klein at the Washington Post - it’s thoughtful, considered and it’s mostly about economic and domestic policy. He’ll put up frequent short, sharp posts explaining why he thinks the excise tax merits a place in the healthcare bill; or why he thinks there are more effective financial regulation reforms than Obama’s 0.15% tax on bank liabilities, and what they are; why he agrees with Obama’s transport policies. He also posts up 5 links every day to other articles readers might find interesting (like an article on financial regulation by Paul Krugman, an ‘executive summary’ on the bank tax released by the Treasury, etc) and a few more light-hearted video clips and so on as well. Very little Republican-bashing.
So basically I would like to find something along these same lines, but written from a right-leaning or Republican perspective to read as well. I’ve been reading the Ace of Spades blog, which is supposedly one of the best, but so far it seems to be a lot of Democrat-bashing rhetoric and not much substantive discussion on policies.
Are there any other good right-leaning blogs that focus on intellectual policy discussion while keeping the political rhetoric to a minimum?
Note: I’ve put this in GQ because it seems vaguely factual to me (anyone reasonable should be able to agree about which blogs focus on policies and from what political perspective), and IMHO says it’s for “less than cosmic” topics which doesn’t sound like it includes substantive politics to me. But if there’s somewhere it should be moved, please move it.
That Volokh blog looks good: he’s certainly a Republican and it’s a genuine and thoughtful blog. He rates Obama an F for his performance this year, but actually gives a few good reasons why. He also explains some of the criticisms of Martha Coakley’s dubious record as a prosecutor - I’d read about these cases in the Ace of Spades blog, but because the language there was all, “this is outrageous! She’s the worst candidate ever! Trust a Democrat to do this type of bullshit!”, I just dismissed it, when it actually sounds pretty bad. Shows how writing in a considered way can actually be more effective than blind partisanship. Thanks.
I don’t know if they count as blogs in your mind, but The Drudge Report includes a loooooong list of regular correspondents with their own pages. You could go shopping there…TRM
Without a doubt, Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit at HotAir.com are BY FAR the best imo. Apparently Michelle Malkin owns the site, but doesn’t blog there (im NO fan of hers, btw, so i like it that she’s the silent owner), and you might not like the comments, as readerships generally leans a bit more SoCon than you likely are, but Ed and Allah are as insightful with analysis (especially the political analysis) as anyone out there.
They lack the whole “defend the gop/conservatism at all costs” that say, RedState or even Sean Hannity has; they are generally spot-on with political analyses and/or fiscal opinions. Obviously they take the stand that govt is way too big and the media is way too in the tank (for example, constant reporting of polls without telling what the sample of dems in it is), but they are pretty even-handed… allah is the ‘metro’ one of them, atheist, pretty libertarian, kinda beta-maleish; ed is the catholic family man up in the midwest.
Not a Republican, but Instapundit is excellent. He agrees with Republicans on gun rights and the War on Terror. He disagrees on fetal stem cell research and gay marriage (in favor of them, obviously). And he was a volunteer on one of Al Gore’s early campaigns.
IBD got struck off the list of papers I will ever read again as soon as they wrote the whole “Steven Hawking would have died if he was British” thing. Aside from the fact that it’s (obviously) an outrageous lie, any paper with editorial standards so shockingly bad that it doesn’t catch that mistake before going to print doesn’t deserve to be read in my opinion.
Thanks for the other suggestions, I’ll give them a look. Ace of Spades today has more gloating about how they want to “lick the tears” off Democrat commentators over the Coakley thing. I just don’t understand how people can take their facts from sources like that, or like the Fox News talk show hosts - how does that level of bias not put them off? I do generally support what the Democrats stand for but if I ever saw a source that gloated about “licking Republican tears” over any issue I’d never read it again…
Promising conservative bloggers whose sites I have not frequented include David Frum, Gary Becker, Richard Posner and Andrew Sullivan. They are on my to-do list.
I hear about the Corner a lot. Kevin Drum is a big fan: he considers it, "A direct pipeline into the conservative id. " For example those at the Corner fervently believe that Obama is a secret wild-eyed radical. Pretty convenient huh? It so happens that their opponent is a villain! But hey that’s typical of left and right wing ideologues: what makes The Corner special is the thin substantiation that separates over-reaction from delusion. Good stuff.
A certain level of bias is acceptable, provided the source gives a fair presentation of the opposing point of view.
The question is whether the source’s aim is to inform its readership or stroke its sensibilities. In Fox News’ case a comparison of their reporting with the day’s AP wires reveals their suppression of inconvenient facts and occasional whopping misrepresentation. I don’t blame Fox for this, though it is apparent that their audience lacks character.
By European standards The Economist is highly conservative. Though its star has dimmed over the past several years, its reporting is still recommended. They have a blog which I have not frequented, but probably should.
