2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Even if Bernie Sanders doesn't win the primary, he has given every indication that he will [View all]Jarqui
(10,123 posts)William Safire was a Nixon speech writer - but had his phone tapped by Dick Nixon. He won a Pulizer prize and sat on their board deciding who should win a Pulitzer for about a decade - he wasn't a complete hack as a writer. He was a libertarian and he was a conservative - but he worked at the New York Times. Maybe he had some things in common with David Brooks - who is NOT a liberal Democrat and I also often disagree with .. but sometimes I can agree with. Safire in my mind was not not a pure hard right wing nut. I do not have him in the same place as Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc - mindless extremists on the right or the Tea Party, Birthers or Freepers. He was definitely conservative - particularly in foreign policy and on the right on many things but not purely and mindlessly so.
Safire got sucked into supporting the Iraq war but so did the woman you support for leader of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden, who I like very much as I like John Kerry and Harry Reid - who also supported the Iraq war.
In his final years as a columnist, he ripped the second Bush administration for being against his libertarian views. Like probably you and definitely me, he was against the Patriot Act. So again, he wasn't blindly all in for Republicans and constantly giving them a free pass for everything they wanted.
You can broad brush him all you want. I often disagreed with him but I have a different view of how he was not extreme on the right. He was fed up with George HW Bush and voted for Bill Clinton. That's hardly a pure right wing guy. And part of what drove him away from Clinton was Hillary and her lying. He gets some sympathy from me there.