Is there any proof that Kristol actually writes his own columns? My guess: No.

I for one would be sad if the Times let him go if for only the reason that his columns are so easy to pick apart and mock that I look forward to Monday mornings when I can dissect them with glee. The blog posts practically write themselves.

C'mon -- where else can the NYT get someone so consistent? No one else -- not even Bush -- can be so utterly wrong on everything.

Bill just isn't cut out of the same bolt of cloth as his daddy.

It doesn't matter that he bashed them on television or does his job horribly. They should give him everything he wants.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a whiner who just needs to relax and be patient. There is obviously some master plan at work in the background that no one should question.

The irony here is that his columns are so colossally bad that many people are reading them, which has probably increased web traffic to his online articles, thus giving the NYT a good reason to keep him on.

The best thing we could have done would have been to largely ignore Kristol's columns. Oh well.

Americans need to read as many different points of view as possible. I would love to see a quality conservative writer in Kristol's spot.

He will probably keep his job because he clearly is a celebrity. Sadly like other celebrities his primary claim to fame is that he knows how to attract attention despite being utterly vacuous.

exactly, doubtful.

if the NYT believes in Obama's call for national unity (which they endorsed after all!), they need to get over it and let Kristol stay.

would they rather Obama's term get off on a bad note of firings and recriminations? I'm sure by now Kristol feels the political winds and will on his own become a much better columnist to reward the NYT's grace.

besides, letting him go would just reward those DFH's in the Left Blogistan.

He's a terrible commentator and writer. He's wrong
on EVERYTHING EVERY TIME !!! Fire his idiot a**! And I can also suggest having Kristof,Freidman and Dowd follow him but the weather hasn't turned cold enough to freeze Hell over yet.

Wingnuts are always whining that their views are not to be found in mainstream media. We on the left find this laughable, and routinely ridicule the stupidity of the long list of media wingnuts.

I'm now wondering if the media's willingness to let these people speak for themselves might not be one of our stronger assets.

Kristol publishes a column, and the world laughs. O'Rielly opens his mouth, and the world laughs. Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, Hannity give us the 'truth' as they see it, and the world shakes it's collective head in disbelief.

It's counter-intuitive, but if I was a conservative repub, I'd want to see less of these lunatics given the free rein to parade their insanity. As a matter of fact, in the interest of my long term survival I might even want the return of the Fairness Doctrine.

I'd also like to see the WaPo dump Krauthammer. He simply has nothing to say, and I see no reason for the paper to run a weekly "I-really-don't-like-Obama" column for the next 4-8 years. There are a few interesting conservatives left out there. Krauthammer isn't one of them.

More than once I was on the online New York Times' main page and thought I was clicking on a column by Kristof, not Kristol. Then I would shriek in horror when I saw the Kristol smirk. That alone is one reason I'd like to see him gone.

I've been working under the assumption that Bill Kristol would be lose his New York Times column as soon as his contract is up. It's never occurred to me that any other outcome is even possible.

Then you are a fool. The NYTimes firing Kristol will just leave Willian the Bloody to scream 'J'ACCUSE!' from the Fox News/NBC pundit bunker when the subject of Liberal Media Bias comes up.

And not to put too fine a point to it, but how many people read his Weekly Standard rag compared w/the Times? No way does he leave a cushy hi-profile gig like that.

Kevin had the right idea. I'd go further and say commenting on that goofball's goofballism lends him a credence (and an amplifying effect) he wouldn't otherwise have.

Wager $5 Frum is taking his place...

I've got it: Let Billy ghost-write Shrub's Presidential memoirs. As Tom Kean might say, perfect together.

-Z

morbo? was that a morbo sighting? :)

I can't help but alter one of the post's sentences by changing only three words:

"Lieberman has not only been a breathtakingly bad chairman, but he's bashed his own party on national television."

What's good for the goose ...

Kristol is no worse at his job than Lieberman is at his.

The official policy of the land is to fill all positions with the sub-mediocre.

"Then you are a fool. The NYTimes firing Kristol will just leave Willian the Bloody to scream 'J'ACCUSE!' from the Fox News/NBC pundit bunker when the subject of Liberal Media Bias comes up."

It wouldn't be FIRING. His contract is only for this election year. But I guess Fox News won't see it that way.

I'm not a bit sorry to be piling on here, but have you noticed that Kristol makes a good argument for retroactive abortion of numbskull ideas. If it could be so, we would be saved from this man's peabrain ideas, and we would all be so much better off! -Kevo

Maybe the NYT is a spineless and sissy as the current Democrat's leadership, and will keep Kristol-meth on as a "nice gesture." A sort of Lieberman of The Gray Lady.

Morbo, tell me about those few interesting conservatives (and I don't mean as a rhetorical hint that there aren't any.)

Kristol is a completely fatuous, amoral product of privilege and, to my recollection, has never been right about anything; but I don't understand why anyone really cares if he remains a NYT commentator.

Ultimately, whether he stays or not will probably depend upon whether the NYT management believes he's making the company money.

It wouldn't be FIRING. His contract is only for this election year. But I guess Fox News won't see it that way. -- Tim, @17:19

They'd view it like they view taxes; Dems don't want to let the (temporary) tax cuts expire; they want to raise taxes.

I wonder, however, whether NYT will renew the contract. I don't read Kristol on line (we get the paper product Mon-Fri, so the only online reading I do is over the weekend), so don't know what kind of response he gets there. But, in the paper copy, it looks like the readers have gotten tired of him. In the beginning, there were lots of responses (letters to the Editor), mostly taking him down a peg or two, but some supporting his views. Now, there are few, if any; people don't even bother to argue with him any more. Yet Brooks' opinions continue to elicit replies, even though he's almost as moronic. So it looks to me that Kristol's value as a conversation starter has gone down and he might not be worth keeping.

... one can hope the Times will put an end to the farce fairly soon.

So I guess you haven't joined in the spirit of reconciliation shown by the Lieberman decision?

So I guess you haven't joined in the spirit of reconciliation shown by the Lieberman decision? -Jinchi

Reconciliation? You mean capitulation.

Kristol is just boring, offering little more than "the tritest conservative conventional wisdom on the subject at hand."

As much as I detest David Brooks, he can occasionally come up with something thought provoking and his prose style is miles better than Kristol.

Safire was just as wrong, but far more readable. I love his "On Language" feature in the Sunday Magazine.

The problem is finding a true "conservative" thinker who puts forth credible assumptions, hypotheses and arguments. You might find a few Libertarian types that can make very interesting and thought provoking arguments on specific policies or very narrowly scoped problems, but the Unifying Theory of Conservativism 1.0 has been utterly repudiated by experimental results. Not surprising since the theory is expressed as "Whites Good/Non-whites Bad, Subsidies Good/Taxes Bad, Corporataions Good/Small Business and Labor Bad, Giving More Power to Powerful Good/Giving More Power to Powerless Bad."

The modern conservative movement is a joke. A dangerous, potentially lethal joke that many people still love to tell and many still love to hear.

We need new conservatives, if that's not a contradiction in terms. And I don't mean just slightly more conservative versions of liberal positions. I mean a truly different approach to solving problems that is clearly different, but also has merit. Even though I count myself as basically liberal, I cannot believe that there is only one path to a better quality of life for us all.

I just don't know what the other paths are, and I'm certain the current crop of "conservative" pundits aren't it.

I get the Times at home, and don't read Kristol. Come on folks, quit clicking on his column, and that will speed his departure from nyt.com

We need new conservatives, if that's not a contradiction in terms. And I don't mean just slightly more conservative versions of liberal positions. I mean a truly different approach to solving problems that is clearly different, but also has merit.

Actually, we have them; they call themselves "centrists." It may sound like I'm being facetious, but really I'm not. Centrists (some of them, anyway) now occupy the territory that used to belong to conservative ideas that could actually work in the real world, but movement conservatives became so skilled at shifting the Overton window that we don't call those ideas "conservative" any more.

Gee, I thought his column was there for comic relief.

At least he has been consistent.

Horror of horrors - David Reinhard has retired from The Oregonian - Please, NYT, do not offer Kristol's slot to him - You could just as well type in the NRO morning report.

Ok, so we all agree Kristol's a crappy columnist.

But why should the Times allow liberals to decide who their explicitly conservative columnist should be?

Is he helping drive the rightwing agenda/conversation? If so, keep him. If not, dump him.

Compared to other Times columnists, how often is his stuff being cited, linked, forwarded, syndicated, reprinted, forwarded, emailed?

I won't miss him if the Times dumps him, but if the paper wants to do some op-ed housecleaning, he's not the first one I'd get rid of.