Nitpick

Inspired by a review of Meghan McArdle, DougJ asks:

But—and I know I’m obsessed with this—why does contrarian concern trolling of liberal policies have to be the dominant mode of so much of the punditocracy? I understand the value of one or two New Republic-type columnists but why do there to be thousands? And why is that when a more-or-less exact replica of dozens of other contrarian concern trolls appears, that replica is greeted as a “fresh voice”?

I’m willing to offer one possible explanation: conservativism is so intellectually bereft that there’s no way to even discuss its positions without laughing, so the default smart-ass position is to nitpick at liberals. But I still don’t think that explains why there is so much of this stuff and why pissing off liberals is considered so important.