[inappropriate comment deleted - editor.]

I've never wanted so badly to know what an innappropriate comment was.

I've got $20 that says it was some sort of profanity uttered by another Republican. As we all know, when they cannot come up with a factually based response or read from a talking point, then they always resort to name calling.

If the Oregonian wants to have one lefty and one righty op-ed columnist, they would be better served to have a Goldwater/Eisenhower/Hatfield type-conservative than a rubber-stamp hack like Reinhard. I value thoughtful and honest opinions from all sides, but I can spot a party-before-country neocon a mile away...

"""they would be better served to have a Goldwater/Eisenhower/Hatfield type-conservative"""

And who might that be? I take it you have a few suggestions?

How about one?

I keep hoping that the people of Oregon will see through the stuff that Reinhart writes - that the more extreme he gets the more people will draw away from him - but they don't. It's a sad commentary on our times that a jerk like this can get away with what he does.

I'm thinking about building an ark.

Hey, if Reinhard can get paid for plagarizing the daily talking points, why write his own stuff? He is a Reppublican, after all.

A ".../Eisenhower/Hatfield type conservative?" Hmmm. Calling either Ike or Hatfield conservative is like calling Joe Lieberman a liberal.

I think it's a sign of the polarization of political debate that traditional Goldwater conservatives are now hard to find. There are some syndicated columnists who don't alwasy toe the party line, such as Debra Saunders and George Will, if you can stand him.

Jack Roberts, however, would make a great columnist, though he'd be like those ex-NBA coaches who get hired as TV analysts and then second guess what the employed coaches are doing.

I don't have a clue who whould fit that bill, but indeed there aren't many left. Ike once warned about the dangers of the growing military industrial complex... I think that foreign policy wisdom and detatchment from lobbying influence is the magnetic north to set your political/ethical compass. The GOP has long since abandoned every trait they've impressed on the American public. A bizarro universe where Dems are more sucessful than the GOP at foreign policy, fiscal responsibility and funding programs, and the GOP takes credit.

Whenever I hear pundits talk about the angry left or extreme liberals, I want to laugh. The neo-con noise machine has suceeded in shifting the debate so far right that the Dems should be picking up Libertarians, Independants and Goldwater conservatives in the next couple of elections, maybe more.

We might see a psudo-4 party system in the U.S. before long...

Not that I'd suspect The Oregonian of this, given its distinctly conservative tilt...

... but if I ran a newspaper, given my personal bias, I'd create "balance" by hiring a couple of smart, reasonable left-leaning opinion columnists, and a pair of brainless, right-wing hacks. In picking up nationally syndicated columnists, I run intelligent liberals and idiotic conservatives.

<h2>If The Oregonian wasn't a Republican newspaper, I'd suspect Reinhard was given space in an attempt to make conservatives look just as stupid as possible. He's like Stephen Colbert without the funny.</h2>