Under Peter Beinart, a New New Republic
Ah, the Great Howard Kurtz has dished out a nice little non-story. The article acts as if there are radical changes a foot down at the New Republic , but it seems to me he's making a moutain out of less than a mole hill. All of Kurtz's nonsense peddling about the New Republic ideology changing under Peter Beinart is completely off the mark. The article points to the fact that the magazine attacked Gore for the speech he made in San Fransisco against war with Iraq as a sign of a drift to the right, but this misses the point entirely. The New Republic bashed Gore for the same reasons that it endorsed him in 2000, because of their DLC-style, New Democrat, Centrist views and these views haven't really changed. The New Repubic endorsed Gore because it blieves that the United States ought to be involved with the world and that it American Power ought to be put to good use overseas. In the 2000 campaign, Al Gore was the more hawkish, less isolationist candidate (and a friend of Martin Peretz, the publisher) and so it was only logical that the magazine endorse him. The reason why it attacked Gore was because the remarks he made in San Fransisco went against the consistently hawkish magazine's grain.

Of course, such subtlies are lost on our friend Howie Kurtz...