Conservatives & Republicans

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s first national TV interview aired during Tuesday’s edition of The Situation Room on CNN, and while Brianna Keilar pressed Clinton on her e-mail scandal and tumbling poll numbers, the interview measured up to little more than a stroll in the park. Along with gooey questions about which woman she thinks should go on the $10 bill and who plays a…

Fox News Channel's Elisabeth Hasselbeck interviewed Pastor Rit Varriale on Tuesday's Fox and Friends over his church's decision to fly a Christian flag over the American flag. Hasselbeck noted how "the move is sparking an outrage on social media," and wondered it was "a fight for faith, or a slam to Old Glory."

Boldly combining the investigative techniques of David McCullough and Maury Povich, New York magazine’s  Chait has done a little historical paternity testing and determined that Andrew Jackson “is, clearly, the father of the modern Republican Party.” Chait argued that Jackson’s status as “the progenitor of the Democratic Party” is based on “a myth.” On the other hand, Jackson “believed the…

Monday’s network evening newscasts offered continuing coverage on the July 1 murder of a San Francisco woman allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant, but it was NBC Nightly News that shamelessly used the occasion to blast "the new Todd Akin" in Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for having “seized upon” the story to promote his stance on illegal immigration as the GOP is “…

On Monday's New Day, CNN again reminded its viewers that the news network's idea of a politically balanced group of voters is to have Democrats who articulate liberal viewpoints paired with Republicans who themselves sound liberal with few conservative views expressed by anyone. After being bumped from the June 26 show in favor of breaking news, the third planned segment featuring a group of six…

The two most recent Republican presidential nominees weren’t particular favorites of the party’s core voters. This time, suggests Jamelle Bouie, if the GOP wants a candidate who excites its base, the choice is clear: Donald Trump, who boasts the “belligerence” and “bigotry” that “ugly and angry” right-wingers love. Since Trump’s never held political office, observed Bouie in a Wednesday piece,…

Richard Nixon’s campaign did what it could to make sure the Democratic party didn’t nominate its strongest presidential candidate in 1972, thereby facilitating Nixon’s re-election. President Obama won’t be on the ballot in 2016, but New York magazine's Jonathan Chait speculates that Obama is trying to smooth Hillary Clinton’s path to the Oval Office by nudging Republicans into nominating Scott…

Conservatives have an ideological fever, and the only prescription is to wait until their crazy ideas vanish. That’s the word from Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman, who opined in a Wednesday post that many on the right have suffered from a sort of “heat-fever” when confronted with President Obama and his policies. Longman explained that “a fever is something that comes over you suddenly…

In the week since the Supreme Court upheld certain Obamacare subsidies, some on the left, applying the wisdom that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” have gratefully praised majority-opinion-writer John Roberts. But now liberals need to put their warm fuzzies for the chief justice behind them and guard against “complacency” regarding the court, advised Brian Beutler in a Tuesday article. “…

On Thursday's New Day on CNN, former Clinton administration official Ana Maria Salazar blasted Donald Trump's recent comments on illegal immigration, and predicted that it would lead to racist violence: "This is hate language. This will incite violence – not only against Mexican-Americans, Mexicans – but also against migrants."

On Thursday, both NBC’s Today and CBS This Morning saw Donald Trump’s presidential bid spelling disaster for the Republican Party in 2016. On Today, correspondent Peter Alexander touted how the “controversy” surrounding Trump’s anti-illegal immigration comments had “proven to be some pretty good politics among some Republicans,” with Trump having “jumped to second place among Republicans in a…

Of all the pundits out there that could make this comparison, it seems somewhat fitting and all the more amusing that on Wednesday’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews credited 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s success in polls to the idea that he’s a “comic book hero” and “Sinatra kinda guy” that connects with Republican primary voters. At the top of his MSNBC show, Matthews wondered if…

Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change. Last week’s Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage. California’s new mandatory-vaccination law. What all these have in common, according to Michael Specter, isn’t merely that they’re correct, but that they’re manifestations of “rational thought.” Three of those events, of course, were highly unpopular on the right (the vaccination…

On the heels of President Barack Obama’s announcement on Wednesday that the United States and Cuba will soon open respective embassies in Havana and Washington, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC covered the story on their evening newscasts with ABC and NBC expressing particular enthusiasm at the move and little to no criticism of the President’s Cuba policy. In addition, the networks failed to…