Conservatives & Republicans

In a Talking Points Memo piece, Ed Kilgore opines, “Even if the supply side of theocratic impulses in America is abating a bit, the demand side will boom” because of “a large and noisy Republican presidential nominating fight in which Christian Right resources will be a fiercely contested prize.”

As I noted almost two weeks ago, hundreds of protesters in Manhattan repeatedly shouted "What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!" during that city's version of the so-called "Justice For All" marches which took place in several locations around the nation on December 13. The New York Times failed to report the protesters' rants in its original coverage of the marches. The fact that…

Brian Beutler defends President Obama and Mayor de Blasio against attacks from the likes of Rudy Giuliani and contends that while “liberal political leaders in America don’t lionize fringe figures,” their conservative counterparts certainly do.

Republicans, remarks blogger Hunter, are “now fairly certain that having frothing crazy people running for president is what doomed them the last time around. But they won't stop…The Republican base—and I mean the frothy ones, the ones that show up in tricorner hats and demand the government get out of their Medicare—lives for these primaries.”

Mark Sumner contends that since the Reagan years, “conservatism has been more than just an argument about tax rates and regulat[ions]. It's become an open and honest war on the whole idea of governing.”

In discussing a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing announced Wednesday, the New York Daily News carried comments made by Howard Zucker, the state's Health Commissioner, about fracking's impact on public health. Zucker asked two rhetorical questions: "Would I live in a community with (fracking) based on the facts I have now?" and “Would I let my child play in a school field nearby or my family…

Leslie Savan writes that “as a character, and not merely a critic, of the right, [Stephen] Colbert held a unique key to the riddle of modern conservatism: How do they keep getting away with it? Why have so many conservatives turned into such small-minded haters and deniers of science, of reality?”

On Friday's CNN Newsroom, liberal Rep. Charlie Rangel completely downplayed how the communist regime in Cuba has harbored a fugitive cop-killer for decades. Anchor Carol Costello raised how Joanne Chesimard, who was named to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List in 2013, was "granted asylum by Fidel Castro." Rangel replied, "I haven't heard her name come up in decades," and asserted that on the "…

Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas is exultant that we are “finally moving on” from the embargo “despite the wailing and teeth gnashing of the [Marco] Rubios and [Bob] Menendezes of the world, and the new generation of Cuban Americans is leading the way.”

On Wednesday, David Gergen ranked a supposed foreign policy accomplishment of President Obama higher than the killing of Osama bin Laden during CNN's special coverage of the Democrat's "historic..decision to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba." Gergen contended that "ultimately, he's going to be judged very favorably by history...on climate change. It probably is the most significant…

The Esquire blogger is pleased that with Obama’s executive action on immigration and the shift on Cuba, “the Republicans now have two major freak-outs in their base that will do nothing except inflame the implacable Right, and thereby cripple the party's ability to reach out to the new Hispanic voters it claims it wants to attract.”

Ed Schultz one-upped colleague Chuck Todd on his MSNBC program on Wednesday. Hours after Todd likened President Obama's policy announcement on Cuba to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schultz compared the Democrat's address to a famous 1987 speech given at the Wall by his predecessor, Ronald Reagan: "Isn't this Barack Obama's 'tear down this wall, Mr. Castro' – that kind of a moment? I mean, if…

ABC News on Wednesday ignored its own poll, one finding that the percentage of Americans who call themselves Democrats is at a "record low." 

In a Wednesday post on Twitter, NBC's Chuck Todd bizarrely compared President Obama's announcement changing the U.S. government's stance towards the communist regime in Cuba to the liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989.