RIP, Charles Krauthammer. One of the few thoughtful conservatives.
From the WaPo, where he was a columnist:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...c2e_story.html
Dr. Krauthammer, whom Bush named to the President’s Council on Bioethics, was never completely a partisan warrior. He differed from many cultural conservatives by favoring legalized abortion and stem-cell research and abhorred the idea of “intelligent design,” calling it “a fraud,” “today’s tarted-up version of creationism.”
He scolded the tea party, a loud minority within the GOP that tried to force its way legislatively with government shutdowns, as the “suicide caucus.” It was one thing to be a “blocking element” in the minority, he said, but their tactics were no way to govern.
Dr. Krauthammer was apoplectic about the rise and election of President Trump, calling him a “moral disgrace” for his initial refusal to fully condemn a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville and a walking “systemic stress test.”
“He had great lucidity of thought and was an extremely pungent polemicist,” Heilbrunn said of Dr. Krauthammer. “Those traits manifested themselves once more in his searing denunciations of Donald Trump as a phony. They showed that Krauthammer wasn’t simply a reflexive, unthinking conservative who was peddling the party line. He had real discernment and independence. At bottom, he was an intellectual, not just a journalist, with real literary flair and style and insight.”