Conservatives & Republicans

Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman laid it on the line (actually, the headline) on Sunday: “Movement Conservatism is Dead as a National Ideology.” Longman argued that “[w]ith each passing year, movement conservatism becomes less viable” as a vehicle for winning the White House and opined that Republicans “will lose, possibly in historic, devastating fashion” the next presidential…

During the Bush era, the Left were wont to remind us that "dissent is patriotic" and being intensely critical of the president was a hallmark of a vibrant democracy, especially on matters of foreign policy and national defense. But in the Obama Era, especially in a crucial midterm election year, well, not so much. On the July 21 Hardball, guest host Steve Kornacki brought on Mother Jones…

On Sunday's Media Buzz, Senator John McCain brushed off Jon Stewart's latest blast at him over the Iraq War. Host Howard Kurtz wondered, "Is Jon Stewart fair to Republicans?" McCain bluntly answered, "No, but it doesn't matter really. He's a comedian." When Kurtz brought up Stewart's "sizable following among young people," the Republican contended that "he's a very entertaining and funny guy,…

Editor’s note: this article contains objectionable language. The Democrat party is the pro-woman party right? Well on Sunday night’s episode of HBO's "True Blood," the left-leaning characters inadvertently reveal their hateful attitudes towards women, all the while mocking conservatives. In the July 20 episode, vampires Eric and Pam are looking for the parents of their enemy, who happen to…

How do you visually represent a missed opportunity? In a Sunday column for Salon, What’s the Matter With Kansas? author Thomas Frank suggests one answer: given the Obama administration’s repeated failure to deliver much-needed leftist change, the future Obama presidential library and museum should be “designed as…a mausoleum of hope.” Obama’s salient mistake, Frank asserts, was that he “…

Jeff Shesol, a presidential speechwriter during Bill Clinton’s second term as well as a book and comic-strip author, posted a piece Friday on The New Yorker’s website about “how Republicans have learned to stop worrying and love the lawsuit” – or, less charitably, about conservatives setting aside their traditional opposition to judicial activism whenever an activist decision would benefit them…

In a Friday-morning post, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall likened the Tea Party to pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine who apparently are responsible for the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Marshall wrote, “Here we have them break into nursing homes to photographs [sic] senator's comatose wives; there Putin gives them heavy armaments designed for full…

According to American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman, movement conservatives live in a bubble, but in this case none of the cards therein say “Moops.” Rather, each carries the name of what righties (though usually not Waldman himself) consider one or another of the Obama administration’s scandals. In a Wednesday post, Waldman wrote that what he called “the IRS scandalette” is “an almost…

Fox News's Megyn Kelly has clearly had it up to here with the disinformation, misinformation, distortions and outright lies coming from the left in the wake of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision. A recent dishonest rant by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart (noted at NewsBusters by Jeffrey Meyer early Tuesday morning) and attempts by certain doctors to deny scientific truth caused Kelly to…

Both CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today chose to ignore the latest news in the IRS scandal Thursday morning that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will be investigating the disappearance and destruction of emails pertaining to former IRS official Lois Lerner.  Meanwhile, ABC’s Good Morning America did cover the news, but only devoted 22 seconds to the story in the form of a news brief during the…

The only coverage of the ongoing border crisis featured on Thursday's NBC Today was report focused on ridiculing a Republican state lawmaker in Arizona for mistaking a bus filled with YMCA campers for one carrying illegal immigrant children. Co-host Matt Lauer teased: "...why one lawmaker is saying he's sorry this morning." Fill-in news reader Tamron Hall hyped the gaffe: "Yeah, this is a big…

No, Vox blogger Matthew Yglesias has not suggested that an appropriate slogan for the current Republican party would be “Get off our lawn!” Yglesias did, however, argue in a Tuesday post that these days, conservative politics reeks of “oldsterism,” as evidenced by developments including righties advocating large budget cuts except for programs benefiting those 55 and older; “constant bickering…

In a hit record from 1974, a girl repeatedly told a suitor, “I don’t like spiders and snakes.” Presumably no one back then thought the song had any political overtones, but forty years later a post on the Mother Jones website has suggested that the girl’s remark meant she probably was a right-winger. MoJo science writer Chris Mooney reported Tuesday on a recent paper that claims conservatives…

Rather than spending his two weeks off developing new ways to insult conservatives, Stephen Colbert returned from vacation brandishing a tired favorite: racism. According to the Comedy Central host, “conservatives, like myself, have supported a unitary executive and the use of executive orders in the past” however, there is something “shady” about Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder…