Conservatives & Republicans

Speaking during CNN’s analysis of the first 2016 Republican presidential debate on Thursday night, CNN political commentator and former Obama White House adviser Van Jones panned Jeb Bush’s performance as “terrible” and “like oatmeal getting colder” but praised Ohio Governor John Kasich as “just unreal,” “emotional,” and an “authentic guy who cares.”

On Thursday’s network evening programs, ABC’s World News Tonight was the only newscast to make no mention of the 5:00 p.m. EDT debate between the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders ahead of the 9:00 p.m. EDT event featuring the top ten candidates. In addition, the CBS Evening News skipped Carly Fiorina’s attack on fellow candidate Donald Trump for his phone call with Bill Clinton. 

During MSNBC’s 4 p.m. ET hour pre-debate coverage on Thursday, Hardball host Chris Matthews called on Fox News moderators to grill the Republican presidential candidates on evolution: “So I would like to think that Fox is just brazen enough to ask some – what they call bizarre questions....If a person doesn’t believe in science or evolution or the evidence of our life on this earth, that’s a bad…

On her Thursday MSNBC show, host Andrea Mitchell fretted that Republican candidates would be not be properly “fact-checked” during the upcoming presidential debate, especially on the Planned Parenthood scandal: “...one of the issues is going to be whether there's going to be any fact checking by the moderators. Certainly we can all do it later after the fact. But the Planned Parenthood debate has…

On Thursday's CNN Newsroom, after showing several clips allegedly showing GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush to be "gaffe prone," anchor Carol Costello somehow thought it newsworthy to read and display on air some of the Twitter mockery of Bush and the other Republican candidates, including a suggestion that they are a group of clowns.

In a rare acknowledgment of media responsibility, on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer declared that it was up to the press to properly cover the first Republican presidential debate: “...that idea of substance versus sizzle, one-liners versus issues. That's on us tomorrow as well. We’ve got to make sure that we cover what they talk about, the issues as opposed to those one-liners.”

Speaking with host J.D. Hayworth on Wednesday’s Newsmax Prime, Media Research Center Research Director Rich Noyes discussed the findings of the latest MRC study that show the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC have given Donald Trump large scores of coverage thus far in the 2016 campaign while giving significantly less time to any of the other GOP candidates.

Though it's not as blatant as the speech which got noticed at Fox News and many center-right outlets (and, of course, nowhere else) eight years ago, it's clear that Hillary Clinton once again altered her diction and style several days ago to (in her mind, one would surmise) "adapt" them to her Southern audience. This time, Mrs. Clinton was being interviewed by South Carolina Democratic Party…

In a Wednesday column, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman extended his odd obsession with raising the gas tax into the 2016 Republican presidential debate. But Friedman will have a hard time convincing Republicans to listen if he keeps throwing around insults, like describing the party's donors and supporters as embracing the "angry anti-science, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-minorities,…

On Wednesday night, the major broadcast networks came out in full force to praise a “defiant” President Barack Obama for having made a “sweeping speech with fiery words” on the Iran nuclear deal that included the President following some in the media by comparing Iranian hardliners to Republicans against the deal (even though some Democrats are opposed to it as well). Hanging on to Obama’s every…

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts surprisingly pursued Hillary Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney on his Wednesday program over the ongoing controversy surrounding the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of the organs of aborted babies. When Finney admitted that Mrs. Clinton had only seen clips of the videos, Roberts wondered, "Why not see the videos?" He later underlined…

CNN's Jake Tapper went after Josh Earnest on Monday's The Lead, after the White House press secretary admitted that he hadn't seen any of the undercover Planned Parenthood videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, and was "relying on news reports that I've seen" about the controversy. Tapper pointed out that "the whole video is put up on the website of this anti-abortion group that put…

Appearing on NBC’s Today on Wednesday, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus predicted GOP contenders would be united in their criticism of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in Thursday’s first primary debate. Savannah Guthrie quickly tried to downplay the breaking news that the FBI would be investigating Clinton’s private e-mail server: “In fact, the FBI, according to a…

Politics involves the heart and the mind, and in general the best politicians appeal to both. Then there’s Donald Trump. Jonathan Chait of New York magazine argues that Trump’s campaign is pretty close to mindless, but it seems that to many rank-and-file Republicans, that’s a feature rather than a bug. “Outsiders have struggled to comprehend how Republican voters can attach themselves to an…