William Kristol

Think of Hillary Clinton.  I know, I know, but work with me. Now think of the first 100 things that come to mind.  Is "change" one of them?  It is for Howard Dean, and Bill Kristol found that hilarious. On today's Morning Joe, explaining his early endorsement of Hillary, Dean claimed that "Hillary Clinton is change." That was enough to provoke hearty laughter in the normally-composed Kristol.  …

Not the endorsement someone heading into the Republican primaries would normally want, but it's the one Rand Paul got.  On today's This Week [hosted by Jonathan Karl in the absence of Stephanopoulos], far-left Rep. Keith Ellison declared that on a variety of issues he is "proud to stand" with Rand Paul. Roll the video and watch Bill Kristol look on beningly as Ellison praises Paul.  Let's read…

Mika Brzezinski has never been short on hyperbolic statements when it comes to Republicans. But she outdid herself in her Wednesday Morning Joe rant on their letter to Iran. She claimed “Senator Tom Cotton either wants to help out Iran, as Hillary Clinton said, or he doesn't understand politics...and foreign policy.”   Joe Scarborough was quick to label the outrageous remark as "deeply…

Looks like it's not just in Iraq where civil war is breaking out. Seems that it could also be happening at MSNBC, with Iraq ironically being the flashpoint. Two nights ago, Rachel Maddow condemned TV shows that book original Iraq war hawks like Paul Bremer. Maddow specifically called out her very own MSNBC for having given Bremer air time.  And just where had Bremer appeared on the Lean…

Liberal vs. neo-con.  Isolationist vs. interventionist.  The clash over Iraq strategy between John Heilemann and Bill Kristol on today's Morning Joe had it all.   Things got heated as Heilemann assailed Kristol's call for intervention as "absurd."  Kristol responded by suggesting that Heilemann's invocation of "American blood" was a cheap "rhetorical line."  View the video after the jump.

At The Weekly Standard, William Kristol protested the conventional wisdom that Americans are incredibly weary of war, and so won’t project strength against Putin or other geopolitical foes. He concluded: “Can Republicans do no better than shamefully to emulate Somerset and Obama (‘I assure you nobody ends up being more war-weary than me’)? Will no brave leader step forward to honorably…

Was Bill Kristol kidding—just throwing a sop to the not-inconsiderable ego of his host—or could he have been serious?  On today's Morning Joe, unveiling his line-up of the nine Republicans he sees running for president in 2016, Kristol included none other than Joe Scarborough himself. But in an unkind cut to someone prospectively facing the famously conservative GOP primary electorate,…

"One would think that Biden’s debate preparation was watching repeatedly 'The Shining,' and I think he did an excellent imitation of Jack Nicholson." So marvelously said syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday's Special Report on Fox.

"The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom have what Palin once called the 'actual responsibilities' of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity…

The Weekly Standard, founded by editor William Kristol and owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is now under new ownership. The conservative magazine has been acquired by Clarity Media, parent company of the Washington Examiner. The deal, first reported by the L.A. Times on June 10, was made official this afternoon. Clarity Media Group is owned by conservative billionaire Philip…

The voters had a temper tantrum last week . . . Parenting and governing don't have to be dirty words: the nation can't be run by an angry two-year-old. -- Peter Jennings, November 14, 1994, on the Republican landslide.[C]onservatives . . . can choose to stand aside from history while having a temper tantrum. But they should consider that the American people might then choose not to invite them…

As a conservative media critic, I often hear liberal journalists say that the reason there aren't more libertarians or conservatives in the media is simply because lefties are more interested in news writing and opinioneering than righties. They are quite quick to deny there is any kind of discrimination--despite the experiences of Susan Molinari at CBS, Ben Domenech at the Washington Post and…

Over at City Journal, writer Harry Stein underlined just how infuriated liberals are that the New York Times has hired William Kristol as a columnist. "For conservatives, long accustomed to self-serving liberal pieties about tolerance, the orgy of outrage at having to face an alien point of view was wonderful to behold...Here is just a tiny, tiny sample of the reaction on the Huffington Post to…