Reading my email in response to this entirely neutral post on the Washington Post’s announcement of Dave Weigel as their “conservatives in the mist” correspondent/blogger, I guess I should make it clear where I come down on this. Basically, while I guess I can think of a few folks I’d rather see with that gig than Weigel, I can think of a hell of a lot of people who would be worse. Weigel actually understands conservatives on their own terms better than the vast majority of big newspaper political reporters. He’s not a conservative, but as a libertarian (of the mildly leftish bent, as far as I can tell) his knee does not jerk the way, say, an Ezra Klein’s might. If I had to bet, we won’t hear a lot about how opposing Obamacare is necessarily racist or evil from Weigel.
Obviously, I’m skeptical about the whole enterprise and in particular what the Post hopes to get from him. But I very much doubt it will be either the Dian Fossey style reportage we get from so much of the MSM (“As I traveled amongst them, I realized that these strange creatures — they call themselves ‘conservatives’ — have a moral system and language very similar to ours”) or the Media Matters style b.s. (“They hate us because they are stupid and evil!”) many liberals will want. Beyond that, only time will tell.