Free Republic

NEW YORK - The New York Times is describing its newest opinion columnist as young and conservative. The Times announced Wednesday that Ross G. Douthat (DOW'-thut), a 29-year-old writer and editor at The Atlantic, will initially write online columns for the newspaper beginning in mid-April.

Ross Douthat, 29, a senior editor and conservative blogger for The Atlantic magazine, has been hired by The New York Times to write a regular column online and then fill the weekly Op-ed slot occupied by William Kristol during 2008. A New York Times spokeswoman confirmed the hiring to E&P this afternoon. Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor, asked by E&P's Joe Strupp why Douthat had been picked, cited his youth, Republican politics, "iconoclast" leanings and intelligence. He also said that he had interviewed several applicants after reading widely the work of many conservatives (see separate story). Rosenthal had sent around...

Word has it that the Atlantic’s Ross Douthat will be picking up where Bill Kristol left off at the New York Times’s op-ed page. Here’s the email the Times’s Andrew Rosenthal sent to colleagues announcing the hire: Folks: Some exciting news. We’ve hired Ross Douthat, currently of Atlantic. Ross will be joining the Times staff in mid-April and will be based in the Washington bureau. He will start out primarily online, but will soon be writing with increasing frequency, and then regularity, on the Op-Ed page, in the Monday slot opposite Paul. At some point, he’ll also resume his work...

Writing in response to my suggestion that the McCain campaign has wanted for creativity, I think Rich Lowry makes a strong case that they've been quite tactically imaginative, and I agree with Rich that they wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for some brilliant improvisations. What I had in mind, though, was ideological creativity - the sort of creativity, for instance, that might have provided stronger talking points for your new-minted veep nominee to trot out when the subject turns to, say, the state of the economy. The McCain camp has found exactly one good domestic-policy talking...