Conservatives & Republicans

Acting as a stenographer on Wednesday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd parroted the Obama administration's new attack against critics of the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange: "They did not expect this backlash on Bergdahl himself. I've had a few aides describe it to me as, 'We didn't know that they were going to swift boat Bergdahl'....a reference to that political fight…

In an interview with Dr. Ben Carson for Meet the Press's web-based feature Press Pass, NBC host David Gregory dismissed Carson's call for "a government that placed the Constitution of the United States at the highest level": "There are some people who say that. That's a very highly charged thing to say. Where is the Constitution not placed in the right level today?" [Listen to the audio or…

This past weekend at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, attendees who voted in a straw poll gave almost 60 percent of their straws to Hispanic-American Ted Cruz (30.3 percent), who edged out African-American Ben Carson (29.4 percent), leaving all others, only one of whom broke 10 percent, in the dust. In what should be considered embarrassing timing, LA Weekly Magazine is…

On Sunday's CNN Newsroom, Susan Candiotti slanted toward the liberal opponents of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati's updated morality clause for its schoolteachers. Candiotti played up how the "new contract now has a litany of thou-shall-nots, including no sex outside marriage; no in-vitro fertilization; no remarriage without an annulment; no homosexual 'lifestyle;' and no public support…

So-called reform conservatives such as David Frum, Michael Gerson, and Ramesh Ponnuru often get relatively favorable attention from liberal journalists -- relative, that is, to Tea Party types, which in turn reinforces the Tea Party's belief that the reformers aren't really conservatives.   Two lefty pundits recently examined the state of reform conservatism. Washington Post columnist E.J.…

Julie Pace at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, is used to carrying water for the Obama administration. Last year, she proudly reveled in how she and her wire service sat on information it had about secret U.S.-Iran negotiations for eight months. My immediate take was that "They didn't report it until the Obama administration said it would be okay to report it." The AP…

In a report at CNBC on Thursday, Dan Mangan covered a "Kaiser Health Tracking Poll" which appears to have been pre-cooked for an administration which would love to have the press give Obamacare even less than the disproportionately low coverage that it has received since a few weeks after HealthCare.gov's diastrous initial rollout. Mangan eagerly took the bait. His opening sentence: "And the…

Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall contended Thursday that there's been a "relatively consistent pattern" of conservatives lionizing those who "hat[e] or insult...some historically or currently discriminated against group." Some of these newly minted right-wing heroes, Marshall argued, lead with their bigotry; others gain fame for "being kind of nuts" and their bigotry…

On Friday, both NBC's Today and CBS This Morning dutifully promoted quotes from Hillary Clinton's new memoir leaked to Politico of the former Secretary of State blasting critics of her mishandling of the Benghazi terrorist attack. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: "If there was any doubt Hillary Clinton's clearly ready to go on offense on this." Political director Chuck Todd agreed: "…

On Thursday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton led his show bellowing about a "war" against First Lady Michelle Obama's school lunch nutrition efforts as he mocked Republicans for wanting to allow financially struggling school districts to delay implementing nutrition standards. With the words "GOP's War Against Healthy Children" on screen in the background, Sharpton began:

In an apparent effort to help bolster Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign and her advocacy for revamping the menu of the nation's public school cafeterias, NBC's Today show plugged the first lady's May 29 New York Times op-ed on the subject. The peacock network hailed Mrs. Obama as one who typically avoids playing politics, but who has courageously decided to step in and make her voice heard…

During a live webcast on NBCNews.com immediately following Wednesday's 10 p.m. ET airing of his interview with Edward Snowden, Nightly News anchor Brian Williams wondered why the National Security Agency was not more receptive to Snowden's claims of unconstitutional spying: "Knowing that in war powers times...the Bush administration use of war powers with Bush and Cheney, isn't the general…

Monday afternoon, in an error which made it into the paper's Tuesday print edition, reporter Paul Richter at the Los Angeles Times, in a story on the Obama administration's inadvertent leak of a CIA director's name in Afghanistan, was apparently so bound and determined to include a "Bush did it too" comparison that he went with leftist folklore instead of actual history. Specifically, Richter…

Republicans want America's kids to be fat so they’ll grow up to be Republican voters! At least that's the fatuous argument from the Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky in a May 28 column, "Republicans for More Fat Kids." Tomasky went on a blistering rant blasting an amendment offered by congressional Republicans which would simply delay the requirements for Michelle Obama’s school lunch program…