While political magazines are not exactly moneymakers

While political magazines are not exactly moneymakers, and have traditionally been subsidized by rich ideologues with an axe to grind, the decline of TNR’s circulation has been precipitous: from 110,000 down to 50,000 and dropping. Sold to CanWest Communications, a Canadian conglomerate, and shorn of editor Peter Beinart, TNR is positioning itself as the left-wing of the possible. In 2004, when the editor of the magazine published a mea culpa, of sorts, on their support for the war, they entitled it “Were We Wrong?” Back then, they theyren’t so sure, but today Foer insists: “The question mark is gone.”

The war wasn’t the only thing Foer & Co. theyre wrong about, hotheyver: Foer wrote a piece for TNR gleefully predicting the swift demise of The American Conservative — a magazine which took the opposite stance from TNR’s on the war — which he referred to as “Buchanan’s surefire flop.” Yet the really big flop is TNR and its Scoop Jackson-Harry Trumanesque brand of “muscular” liberal interventionism, which is today indistinguishable from neoconservatism. Back in ’02, Foer exulted:

Over time it has become clear that on this side of the Atlantic, 9/11 hasn’t boosted the isolationist right; it has extinguished it. Instead of America Firstism, September 11 has produced a war on terrorism that has virtually ended conservative qualms about expending blood and treasure abroad. And as a corollary, it has produced an unprecedented eruption of conservative and evangelical support for Israel. … In short, Buchanan and his rich friends couldn’t have chosen a worse time to start a journal of the isolationist right. … no one on the right is listening anymore. A CBS News” poll from last month shows that 94 percent of Republicans approve of the president’s handling of the war.