'Ally McBeal' Star to Play GOP Pundit

July 25th, 2006 1:47 PM

Calista Flockhart, formerly star of the 90s Fox hit "Ally McBeal" is set to return to television as a Republican pundit. Amazingly, she doesn't seem to be particularly conservative:

ABC reportedly has huge hopes for a new series to air this fall called "Brothers & Sisters," which will follow the hit "Desperate Housewives" on the schedule. Calista Flockhart, best known as Ally McBeal, plays a conservative radio host turned TV pundit. [...]

Flockhart recently explained, "I really want to go back to work. It just seemed like the perfect time and the perfect project."

Asked to describe the pundit, producer Ken Olin (formerly a star of “Thirty Something’) said, "She's not Ann Coulter. She's not insane."

Writer Jon Robin Baitz added, "No, I think she's a thoughtful conservative. She's ideologically, in some respects, very much in mind with the older parts of the party, the sort of Eisenhower Republican, the William Buckley conservative. She's also a humanist."

Baitz needs to bone up on his conservative history. Eisenhower was always thought of as too liberal by the 50s conservatives like Buckley. I wonder how many episodes are going to involve Flockhart's character "standing up" to evil, heartless conservatives or libertarians.