Sounds like someone not well informed on the issues--or trying to start an argument with the first column. Does she have alternatives to what she doesn't like? Or is she just shallow, although apparently better mannered than Reinhard?

The O, it appears, thinks Ms Hovde is that perfect combination of "right-center" edginess and intelligence to replace Mr Reinhard and counter what a vocal minority believe are the evils of leftist socialism. Is it any wonder dead tree newspapers are … er, well ... dying? I wish them luck 'cause they're gonna need it. This is an industry where shares dropped an average of 83.3% in 2008, wiping out $64.5 billion in market value in just 12 months. The shares of eight of 14 publishers tracked fell by 90% or more. The best-performing companies were the Washington Post Co., New York Times Co., and News Corp., but WaPo, the least battered issue of all, still fell 51.5%. (Source: http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090102133658.aspx ) Do they still print the O in Portland?

She read like an Ann Coulter wannabe, and a not-particularly-well-informed one, at that.

Eww.

She read like an Ann Coulter wannabe

That's exactly what I was thinking as I read it yesterday.

I read her yesterday while I was out having a bagel and some coffee, pieces of the O were laying around the table. I couldn't find the section with the crossword puzzle, so I drifted to Hovde.

She's scared of Obama (oh my!), she's scared of sex ed (oh my!)... She's against torture but didn't say if she thought Bush's extrajudicial interrogation techniques were torture, so her moral stance appears as empty as Bush's, the guy she voted for twice.

She blames Oregon land-use policies for sprawl in Washington State, which is really stupid. Sprawl is an intentional land-use policy, it doesn't just "happen". Communities bake sprawl into the cake with zoning and planning regulations, like the number of acres of asphalt a big-box store has to have on its frontage(based on gross-receipts-per-hour) to limitations on residential density and pass-through traffic.

Anywho, I rarely read Rheinhart, I don't anticipate I will read much of Hovde. I breeze through the hard-copy version of the O once a week or so to do their baby crossword puzzle while I'm having some eggs.

Okay guys come on. Saying that Ms. Hovde sounds like a Ann Coulter wannabe is a little ridiculous. Fine her views are definitely not "center-right" as she'd like to have people think they are but Ann Coulter is an incredibly rude, uninformed, foul mouthed, anti-intellectual. Ms. Hovde, though I disagree with her on almost every single issue she chose to inform us of her opinion on, at least said what she had to say in a polite manner and seems open to discussion.

The way I see it, if Reinhard wasn't able to ultimately do much to affect the overall left of center feel of the area I don't think a slightly more reasonable but just as out of touch person is going to do any better.

Faolan

Faolan,

You are correct. I guess comparing Hovde to Ann Coulter is like comparing mildly offensive people to Hitler.

I was thinking of the Coulter comparison in the sense that in her first few sentences Hovde sounds like she enjoys saying "provocative" things just for the sake of being provocative...

I'm not David Reinhard, but I'll take his hate mail. I am used to being a right-of-center columnist on the Left Coast. And I love it, in part because of the endless supply of opposition.

I really wanted to stop reading right there, but curiosity got the better of me.

<h2>She's a scumbag.</h2>