Conservatives & Republicans

While interviewing former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Wednesday's NBC Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon argued that if the Netflix documentary Mitt about the GOP candidate had been released before the 2012 election, voters may have made a different choice: "Because gosh, it was fantastic. And I was telling you, if you could have had that out, you know, while you were running, I…

Brian Beutler of The New Republic thinks no one who’s as far to the right as Ted Cruz is can be elected president, and, to support that opinion, he enlisted (or perhaps drafted) a conservative hero, albeit one who died in 1998. In a Monday article, Beutler asserted that “if Barry Goldwater were still alive, he’d be a guest on cable news somewhere warning Republicans that Ted Cruz is too…

Appearing on Fox News's Kelly File Tuesday night, Texas Senator Ted Cruz mocked the virulent media coverage of his newly-announced presidential campaign: "Well, look, there's nothing like the warm embrace of the mainstream media."

Discussing the presidential bid of Senator Ted Cruz with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday's CBS Late Show, host David Letterman described the Texas Republican motivating "extreme" supporters: "...he announced at Liberty College [sic], which is Jerry Falwell's place.... And that was, of course, purposeful, because he wanted to establish his – the base, the core of the extreme right-wing part…

The left-liberal magazine The Nation has just published its 150th-anniversary issue, which includes Alterman’s piece on the state of American conservatism. Alterman makes two main points. One is that conservatives are ideologues, whereas liberals are pragmatists. The other is that prominent righty pundits routinely spew nonsense not because they’re dumb, but because extremist plutocrats control…

In interviews with all three broadcast networks on Tuesday, newly-announced Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz was pressed on whether he would abandon his conservative principles in a White House run. Matt Lauer: "In your short time in the Senate you've developed a reputation as a guy who does not back down, who will not compromise....Will you bring that brand of no-compromise to the…

On Monday night, the major broadcast networks devoted full segments to the announcement from Republican Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, with CBS touting how he could face “some rough sledding” if he seeks support from “mainstream Republicans” and ABC made sure to point out his promises of “no abortion, no gay marriage, no gun control,” and…

The New Yorker’s Borowitz and Esquire’s Pierce trash the Texas senator (Pierce claims that Cruz “represents politics and a vision of government that was out of date in 1860” and that he’s “connected, rhetorically for the most part, to the darkest manifestations of the American political Id”).

Today the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Associated Press's Scott Bauer reported, "turned away a challenge to Wisconsin's voter identification law," meaning that "the state is free to impose the voter ID requirement in future elections." Bauer then focused on the impact of the state's off-year primary elections on April 7. Bauer's relatively tolerable (for him) report tagged the law as "a political…

On Monday's NBC Today, while discussing Senator Ted Cruz's announcement of his presidential candidacy, co-host Savannah Guthrie described the Texas Republican as "whip smart, a real conservative firebrand, knows how to throw those rhetorical bombs that the base loves."

Kim Messick believes America since its founding has suffered three serious breaches of political trust, the last of which is ongoing and results from “the readiness of Republicans to violate long-standing norms of institutional conduct in order to advance a highly divisive, intensely partisan agenda” that’s implacably hostile to most functions of government. Messick touches on Tom Cotton’s letter…

Ahead of Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s expected Monday announcement declaring his candidacy for President of the United States, NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd on Sunday teed up California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown to blast the Republican as “absolutely unfit to be running for office.”

Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig claims that the use of “taxpayers” (rather than "people") in discussions of fiscal and economic issues benefits conservatives for reasons including that it “seems to subtly promote the idea that a person’s share in our democratic governance should depend upon their contribution in taxes” and bolsters the makers-vs.-takers argument that became associated with Republicans…

Friday's ABC World News Tonight touted how the FBI is opening an investigation into departing Congressman Aaron Schock. David Wright devoted a full one minute, 39-second report to Schock allegedly "padding the mileage on his personal car by some 90,000 miles," as well as "misusing campaign funds and...taking improper donations." By contrast, ABC set aside just 30 seconds of air time to a…