While the Republicans are arguing about the meaning of their party and their philosophy, one of the clearest-thinking journals in America, Commentary magazine, is signaling that its own transition will be true on matters of principle. It announced yesterday that its next editor will be John Podhoretz, who will take over the monthly in January 2009. Mr. Podhoretz will be only the fourth editor of Commentary in the magazine’s 61-year history, succeeding one of the finest editors in journalism, Neal Kozodoy, who has been with Commentary since 1966, served as editor since 1995, and made the magazine the gold standard of what has come to be called neo-conservative thinking — and a showcase of enterprising journalism, offering scoop after scoop on the beat of ideas.

Mr. Kozodoy was handed the reins of the magazine at a memorable dinner in New York, when the editor who had moved the magazine into the forefront of the conservative movement, Norman Podhoretz, retired. During his tenure the magazine published “Dictatorships and Double-Standards,” by an academic named Jeane Kirkpatrick. It caught the eye of Ronald Reagan, and the rest is history. Mrs. Kirkpatrick was the second person to become ambassador to the United Nations on the strength of an article in Commentary, the first being a Harvard professor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who wrote “The United States in Opposition.” The magazine published, in 1976, “The Return of Islam” by Bernard Lewis, foreshadowing the current war.