The New York Times' wunderkind columnist is on a quest to save intellectual conservatism.
—By Mark Oppenheimer

... Douthat's debut weekly column, provocatively titled "Cheney for President," appeared on the Times' op-ed page. He'd been hired the previous month to succeed William Kristol, whose tenure as resident hard-right pundit had lasted barely a year. Douthat had written two books, but his only regular gig outside of The Atlantic had been reviewing movies for National Review. He had never been a beat reporter, nor worked in politics, nor been employed anywhere outside Washington ... In a 2000 column in the Harvard Crimson ... he concluded that a "sudden and artificially induced increase in voter turnout would only mean an increase in the number of ill-informed, poorly thought out and just plain stupid votes. To be blunt, most of the people who don't vote, shouldn't vote" ... In a 2006 blog post ... he expressed dismay that Jennifer Aniston's character in The Break-Up gets a Brazilian bikini wax ... Douthat wrote a column acknowledging Palin's "missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues." But he also defended her as a victim of gender and class prejudice ...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/ross-douthat-new-york-times-conservatism