Dowd writes too many man-hating articles for my taste. I take her as an undercover lesbian feminist, not that it is bad, but when you can use something as powerful (paper of record) as the NY times as a pulpit it can only invoke division and not unity, as she pretends to want.
I am kinda with August here. Outside of Frank Rich, the times editorials are left leaning. Though sometimes they are true, they still have a bias.
The rest of the NY times is the best journalism you can find, just avoid the editorials!
Take it from someone who gets it delivered to his house.
As for Newt, he is the most viable of the candidates, but is getting eaten by his own. Even his own Fox news cronies are smacking him, they want Mitt.
I loved Newts views on foreign aid. Fox hated it, it went against the status quo. Our military contractors got butthurt.