Wanted: Intelligent Hacks

Conor Friedersdorf argues that intelligence and blind allegiance don't mix:

I’ve written before that the right desperately needs more people whose foremost commitment is to intellectually honest journalism, but whose political views and guiding principles happen to be right of center. Only such people can right the ideological imbalance in the press that conservatives so often complain about. Rather than cultivate these people, however, the conservative movement labels them heretics. What lesson do you think young Christopher Buckleys are taking from his departure from National Review? Does that lesson promise to increase or decrease the supply of non-hack conservative journalists in the long term?

The core of the problem is that the right wants writers who are intelligent, talented and credible to non-conservatives… and who are willing to hold their tongues should their honest analysis ever hurt the short term electoral prospects of the Republican Party. Very few of these people exist! Far too few to build a successful movement around.