Domenech deserved to be let go; but in the course of celebrating his demise, liberals have missed the real lesson of this entire episode. Instead of hiring a conservative, the Post hired a caricature of one; Domenech’s blog would have been less a product of red America and more a product of what blue America understands red America to be. More than anything else, the sad saga of Ben Domenech reveals just how simplistic blue-state elites have become in their understanding of American conservatism. ~Rob Anderson, The New Republic

Credit is due to Michael Brendan Dougherty for “L’Affaire Domenech,” the title of his recent Brainwash column on the same topic.

As tempted as I am to agree that Ben Domenech might be called a “caricature” of a conservative, if I did so I would have to apply that label to a great many of his political confreres. What is supposed to make Domenech a caricature? Mr. Anderson explains:

He was not known for producing thoughtful conservative think-pieces, or even for intrepid reporting. On the contrary, he was better known for his vitriol.

In other words, he was as qualified to run the blog as half of the contemporary “conservative” commentariat. But what passes for unreasonable and vitriolic in Mr. Anderson’s book would condemn quite a few of the better known figures in contemporary conservatism:

The right has its share of bigots and xenophobes. And vitriolic right-wing pundits like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin always seem to shout the loudest. But just because these strains of conservatism exist doesn’t mean that this is what conservatism is reducible to. If the Post really wants to add a meaningful voice to the political debate, it should know better than to simply turn to Ann Coulter’s male counterpart.

In other words, the Post should have hired some nice academic from Claremont or a neoconservative who had interned at AEI (you know, one of the “good,” manageable conservatives who basically doesn’t disagree with the good liberals on most of the really controversial questions), and not someone who had worked with or wrote in the style of the likes of Michelle Malkin. I mean, goodness, that woman opposes illegal immigration! Where will the madness end? You can’t have that sort of sentiment at a respectable newspaper’s website. In case there was any doubt, Mr. Anderson confirms that this is exactly what he means when he approvingly cites the list of possible replacements for William Safire as a model for what the Post should do:

Who will Brady pick as Domenech’s replacement? He might want to take a look at these lists (here and here), compiled by Slate’s Jack Shafer when The New York Times was looking for columnists to replace William Safire. For the most part, Shafer’s suggestions include respected, or at least respectable, conservatives: Heather MacDonald, Steve Chapman, John Ellis, Stuart Taylor Jr., Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn, and James Lileks. Then again, the Post will probably pass on all of them: Not one conforms to a liberal’s caricature of what a conservative should be.

Excluding Steve Chapman, who is a frequent dissenter from the good news of the Bush Era, it is my initial impression that all of these are people who do fit the conventional stereotype of contemporary conservatives (maybe not a “liberal’s caricature” of one, which usually involves protruding horns and the ability to belch fire). They would say all the predictable things in reflexive defense of the administration on most matters, occasionally offering up a little criticism to show that they were not completely mindless and generally serving as the easy foil to the ready-made liberal counter-arguments. Ben Domenech might have been more blunt about these things, but the end result would have been fairly similar.

If Mr. Domenech does represent a particularly thoughtless brand of conservatism, he is not alone among many of his fellow conservatives. However, I suspect that Mr. Domenech’s past work is being put in the worst light to score a larger point against those aspects of modern conservatism liberals find most terrifying (opposition to immigration and homosexuality, etc.) and construct a conservatism that the readers of The New Republic would be comfortable around. This is not necessarily to say much in praise of the Ann Coulter style of conservatism, but to see that TNR is trying to shrink the limits of permissible debate even more than they already have been.