Conservatives & Republicans

Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to rain on one of liberals' most sacred observances -- the anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency. Since this year's anniversary ends in a zero, four decades having passed from that somber day in August 1974, liberals are more choked up than usual. (Audio after the jump)

A great many movement conservatives weren’t fans of Richard Nixon’s presidency, to the point that some of them, including William F. Buckley Jr., William Rusher, and M. Stanton Evans, backed a 1972 primary challenge to Nixon by Rep. John Ashbrook of Ohio. But has Nixon, despite his ideological squishiness, greatly influenced today’s Republican party? New Yorker blogger Jeff Shesol says he has…

Erroneous attacks against the American for Tax Reform’s (ATR) Taxpayer Protection Pledge are nothing new. Liberal Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer is funding the latest spate of misleading TV ads through his super PAC. The ad  wrongfully attacks Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst for signing the Pledge, claiming that the pledge protects tax credits for companies that send jobs overseas…

President Obama never saw battle or even served in the military, but according to Esquire political blogger Charles Pierce, Obama and his administration now suffer from something akin to shell shock, the result of "constant bombardment" from the Republican forces of “unreason,” “illogic,” and “fantasy.” Pierce argued in a Tuesday post that dealing with torqued-up craziness like that of the…

Several months ago, based on several far from minor out-of-the-gate mistakes, I characterized the candidacy of the Democratic Party's challenger to incumbent Republican Governor John Kasich as "the wreck that is Edward FitzGerald." In the past week, FitzGerald has utterly imploded. The latest revelation Tuesday afternoon, namely that he had "no license to drive at all from 2002 to 2008,"…

For the second consecutive night, Wednesday night’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams continued its refusal to cover the findings in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in which President Obama’s job approval rating hit a record low. 54 percent of Americans disapprove of how Obama is doing his job, while merely 40 percent approve in what is his lowest percentage since he took office…

After NBC Nightly News completely ignored the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Tuesday, political director Chuck Todd appeared on Wednesday's Today to promote the survey but skipped the finding that President Obama's job approval rating sank to 40%, with 54% disapproval. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Todd framed the poll results as evidence of an "…

Conservatives seeking a potential president who’s like Ronald Reagan might be interested to know that Andrew O’Hehir of Salon thinks he’s found such a person. True, they might then be surprised to learn that he's talking about Hillary Clinton. O’Hehir, who’s well to the left of Hillary on economic issues, doesn’t intend the Clinton-Reagan comparison as a compliment to either. He believes that…

They had to invent Sarah Palin's supposedly most embarrassing gaffe when she was the vice-presidential nominiee in 2008. She never said, "I can see Russia from my house!" Comedienne Tina Fey did. As noted at NewsBusters several days ago, that hasn't altered the folklore. You don't have to invent gaffes for Joe Biden, the man who became Vice President after the 2008 election. He generates them…

Damon Linker, who opines for the newsmagazine The Week, thinks the so-called reform conservatives have a chance to pull the Republican party back towards the center, but predicts it won’t happen until after the GOP base -- currently “gripped by a form of political psychosis, doing furious battle with ideological phantoms of its own creation” -- nominates for president a “genuine right-wing…

It would almost not be worth noting, because it's so predictable. On Fox News Sunday, Juan Williams, with strategic support at opportune times from National Journal's Ron Fournier, characterized the support within the Republican Party for impeachment as coming from "Tea Party opposition ... (with) no diversity, it's a white, older group of people." What makes it worthy of notice is the fact…

On MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry program on Saturday, Dean Obeidallah injected race into the debate inside the U.S. over the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict: "You saw a poll last week, young people 18 to 29: only 25 percent think it's justified what Israel is doing; 50 percent said, no. People of color, same numbers...It's really the Obama coalition versus white conservatives. That's the only…

A specter is haunting conservatives, suggests Amanda Marcotte –- the specter of nerdiness. In a Wednesday article for AlterNet, Marcotte blasted the right’s supposed resentment of "things like evidence, rationality, and empiricism," as expressed in forums such as a recent National Review cover story critical of what its writer called America’s "extraordinarily puffed-up 'nerd' culture." In…

Former Congressman Barney Frank had "a July interview" with the Huffington Post. The liberal blog's Zach Carter put up a post about it on Friday, August 1 at 3:59 p.m. How convenient, because Frank ripped President Obama and his administration, who he says "just lied to people" about whether they could keep their existing healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.…