Conservatives & Republicans

In an interview with former Obama White House press secretary and current NBC political analyst Robert Gibbs on Tuesday's Today, co-host Matt Lauer saw big problems for Hillary Clinton in the wake of revelations that she used a private email account during her tenure as secretary of state: "It provides a lay-up, doesn't it Robert, for her critics who say this is all about a lack of transparency…

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait argues that “Inhofe’s argument was breathtakingly devoid of a factual or logical grasp of its subject matter” and remarks that while “the design of environmental regulation, or the appropriate balance between economic cost and clean air, is a subject on which reasonable people can disagree…the modern Republican party (as opposed to the one of a generation ago)…

Following a morning in which NBC’s Today offered only criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his visit to the United States, Monday’s NBC Nightly News continued piling on the denunciation of Netanyahu for creating a “storm of controversy” during “a tense and critical moment” in U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations. Fill-in anchor Savannah Guthrie proclaimed that a “storm of…

Say "1964," and those of us old enough might think of the appearance on Ed Sullivan's show of some little British group called the Beatles. But Chris Matthews recalls something else: the Republican party's decision to nominate Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, and his ensuing wipeout by LBJ. On his MSNBC show tonight, Matthews suggested that Republicans are in a similarly reckless mood, and…

The major broadcast networks all ignored on their Monday night newscasts reports that a federal judge ruled earlier in the day that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had lied to Landmark Legal Foundation in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and warned the agency to cease discriminating against other conservatives. In a 25-page opinion, Washington D.C.-based Judge Royce C.…

CNN State of the Union substitute host Dana Bash certainly lived up to her last name when it came to grilling Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) over the Department of Homeland Security funding and asking if the “conservative wing” of the Republican Party was too centered on principle and “chaos” instead of the “reality” of governance. Bash started the interview off by insinuating that everyone is…

Introducing a one-sided report on Monday's NBC Today that featured no criticism of President Obama, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived ahead of a controversial speech to Congress tomorrow. And that visit at the invitation of Republicans is threatening to further strain the Obama administration's relations with Israel."

The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman argues that Republican base voters routinely wind up hurting the party’s center-right presidential nominee because he feels he has to throw them one or more bones: “Poppy [George H. W. Bush] didn’t really need to promise no new taxes, but it was a broken promise that cost him dearly. [John] McCain overcompensated for his weakness with the base by giving us…

The writer-at-large for New York magazine identifies Carson as the latest of the Republican party’s three “Great Black Presidential Hopes,” but argues that Carson is more significant than Alan Keyes or Herman Cain because he’d be running “in the context of both restrictive voting laws and the retro civil-rights jurisprudence of the John Roberts” Supreme Court. Rich also claims that “Carson lends…

Friday's CBS This Morning surprisingly covered a proposed bill in Florida that would allow college students with concealed firearms permits to carry their weapons onto campus. Michelle Miller spotlighted a Florida State University graduate student who backs the bill. However, Miller also featured two opponents of such "campus carry" legislation during her report.

On Friday morning at Jezebel, a Gawker-affiliated web site, Natasha Vargas-Cooper thought she had Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker by the — well, you know. In a post tellingly tagged "Conservative Werewolves," Vargas-Cooper was absolutely sure — so certain that she apparently felt no need to check any further — that Walker's proposed budget would allow its colleges to "to stop reporting sexual…

On Friday evening, the Big Three networks continued their blackouts on the Thursday revelation that the Treasury Department's deputy inspector general, Timothy Camus, is conducting an "active investigation" into the "potential criminal activity" at the IRS over Lois Lerner's supposedly missing e-mails. Instead, ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all devoted full…

A couple of thousand protesters have showed up to rail against the Wisconsin Legislature's move to pass right to work legislation this week. That number is far smaller than what was seen four years ago, when Badger State Governor Scott Walker championed Act 10, a budget repair bill which limited — but please note, contrary to frequent press assertions, did not eliminate — most public-sector…

Well before Obama moved into the White House, he believed his presidency would have “the potential for shifting the national paradigm” to the left as Reagan’s moved it to the right, and Brian Beutler contends that such a shift still could happen if “the economy’s rapid growth in recent quarters” continues.