Frankly, I can imagine a number of other reasons why Kristol would prefer a liberal to Pat Buchanan even though both are staunchly pro-life. ~Wlady Pleszczynski

Well, this is true up to a point, though describing Kristol as “staunchly pro-life” rather greatly exaggerates how important life issues are to him. This is why Jim was correct when he said, “I do recall Bill Kristol saying he’d vote for a New Republic liberal on Iraq over a non-squishy pro-lifer,” because that is exactly what Kristol said:

I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan or any of the lesser Buchananites on the right. If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives [bold mine-DL].

If I wanted to be more polemical, I could dwell on that last sentence for a while, but why bother? Kristol there is stating what everyone knows about his politics. Circa 2004, a “New Republic liberal” on Iraq was pro-war, and that fit Kerry quite well. It is quite clear that Kristol is saying that foreign policy trumps social issues when he is deciding whom he should support, which has obviously been true regarding the candidates The Weekly Standard has supported in the past and continues to be true today. More to the point, and coming back to the beginning of this debate, if Ross is a “squishy” pro-lifer as he described himself, Kristol is as limp as a wet noodle. If we are to believe that Kristol is “staunchly pro-life,” that would make Ross a relative hard-line fanatic on the subject, which would be misleading in both cases.

Filed under: foreign policy, politics