Must Be Lonely In There

Peter Boyer is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and as far as I can tell, he is the lone center-right contributor. Below is his profile from the New Yorker homepage:

Peter J. Boyer joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1992. He has written on a wide range of subjects, including politics, the military, religion, and sports. Among his recent articles were the story of Addie Polk, a ninety-year-old widow whose eviction symbolized the national foreclosure crisis; a recounting of the demise of the American automobile industry; and Profiles of the broadcaster Keith Olbermann and the Thoroughbred-horse trainer Larry Jones.

Before joining The New Yorker, Boyer was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and a television critic for National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” He won a George Foster Peabody Award, an Emmy, and consecutive Writers Guild Awards for his reporting for the documentary series “Frontline.”

I happen to love the New Yorker magazine because the quality of the writing is difficult to find elsewhere. Sure, it's a center-left publication. But it possesses a maturity factor that one might not find on the editorial pages of the New York Times. One gets the feeling that if a subject is not written about in the New Yorker, it might not be written about AT ALL.

Peter Boyer must get pretty lonely being the sole contrarian among the liberal denizens of the New Yorker, an esteemed list that includes Jeffrey Toobin, Hendrik Hertzberg, George Packer, and Ryan Lizza. Jeffrey Toobin even had the audacity to describe President Obama and his federal court nominees as practioners of judicial restraint and Senator Roland Burris of Illinois (the man who was appointed, controversially, by impeached governor Rod Blagojevich) as something other than a Democratic Party hack. But liberal economics writer James Surowiecki
writes some of the most compelling arguments against, well, pretty much every thing I believe in. He even hit a home run a few weeks ago with his analysis of the failings of the ratings agencies and their relation to the fiscal calamities of the last few years.

Anyways, back to Mr. Boyer. He wrote a brilliant piece a few weeks ago about the future of the American Right. Below is the abstract.

ABSTRACT: THE POLITICAL SCENE about conservative Republican strategy in the Age of Obama. In late spring, the writer travelled to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to hear a political talk by Pat Toomey, the conservative former congressman who had effectively driven Sen. Arlen Specter out of the Republican Party. Toomey’s decision to challenge Specter in the 2010 primary caused Specter to join the Democrats, all but assuring them a filibuster-proof majority. The Toomey challenge crystallized the stresses that tore at the Republican Party in the early months of the Barack Obama era. Toomey was a candidate of the conservative base. Republican moderates and the Party’s leadership, wary of the base, saw in Toomey’s move the flawed impulses of a defeated and contracting Party. In Bethlehem, Toomey talked about the economy, and the perils posed by the Democratic program in Washington. He did not mention abortion or gay marriage, both of which he opposes. He also said that the Republican tent had to make room for constituencies besides social conservatives, but that there needed to be a unifying idea—personal freedom, and its corollary, limited government. It was Toomey’s calculation that Obama’s policies and governing philosophy would do more to rehabilitate conservative doctrine than Republicans themselves ever could, and that by 2010, the American public would ask the Republicans to apply a brake. The way back for Republicans was through resolute opposition to the Obama spending programs. Jim DeMint, the junior senator from South Carolina, and Toomey are natural allies. Mentions the Club for Growth. DeMint and Toomey stand on the side of the Republican divide which believes that the Party failed because it strayed from its core principles, and that if Republicans hold fast in opposition the Party can regain its lost identity. DeMint is a first-term senator in establishment Washington, but he has managed to become a leading insurrectionary voice. In a July 17th teleconference call with activists opposing Obama’s health-care initiative, DeMint said, “If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo.” With this remark, DeMint emerged as the de-facto voice of the Republican opposition. He has tapped into the wrath of the conservative base, which was magnified by Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet. The loss of Congress in 2006 sent the Republican Party into a period of pained introspection, its partisans divided into roughly two camps: those who insisted that renewal could come from a return to low-tax, limited-government fundamentals; and reformers who believed that the Party had become too harshly doctrinaire and urgently needed to broaden its appeal. Sen. Specter says that the Party has now become a captive of the DeMint wing. The question remaining for many Republicans is whether the Party can develop a strategy beyond opposition, an argument for governing that will expand its appeal beyond its ideological core.