Mark Sumner

The debate rages on as to whether Donald Trump has remodeled or vandalized the Republican party. In any event, left-wing pundits spent the week gaping at, and writing about, what they viewed as the grotesque spectacle of the RNC. For example, Daily Kos’s Hunter opined that the convention was "was barely one step up from an internet-peddled snuff film,” and Salon’s Heather Digby Parton declared…

Plenty of conservatives would concur with Daily Kos writer Mark Sumner that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is a fascist. They certainly would not agree with Sumner’s belief that the GOP as a whole has become increasingly aligned with fascism “since at least 1994.” Sumner contended in a Sunday article that beginning in “the time of the Gingrich,” Republicans “realized they could…

Apparently at least two of the Beach Boys are Republicans, but when Daily Kos's Mark Sumner used a GOP/surfing metaphor, it didn't mean “catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world.” Rather, as Sumner sees it, the party is heading for a wipeout. “For decades, Republicans have been thriving on a theme of Me-firstism and an insistence that it's the sworn duty of every American to fear…

In a Sunday-morning post, Daily Kos blogger Mark Sumner argued that the “threat ISIS represents to the United States” is “[e]xactly none” and urged us not to overreact now the way we supposedly did after 9/11 and consequently “hand over freedoms for an illusion of safety. The NSA reading your email and listening in on your phone, idiots mistaking a dropped t-shirt at the Mexican border for the…

The left often alleges that conservatives don't merely dislike government but deliberately undermine it for political or financial gain (and sometimes both). Daily Kos blogger Mark Sumner chimed in to that effect this past Sunday.   Sumner writes that conventional wisdom blames "rising incivility" and "simple intransigence" for Washington's failure to accomplish much of anything, but that in…

Mark Sumner at the Daily Kos demands that reporters point out that supply-side economics is a complete fantasy. "Any politician who promises to right the economy through cutting taxes on the wealthy might as well invoke the Easter Bunny, and any reporter who fails to point this out is failing the public." Conservatives believe in a supply-side Sasquatch? "There is a difference between…

If liberals thought the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth was a little sickening, they could always find comfort in the loopy leftist loathing of the Daily Kos. On Sunday, "Slangist" took the fruitcake with lines like this: "First elected Governor on a muted inclination to shoot student demonstrators, Reagan spent his political life as an apostle of reaction,…

In the warm, generous glow of the Christmas season, it's quite expected that scolds of the Left will accuse the conservatives of being the very archetype of Ebenezer Scrooge. On The Daily Kos, Mark Sumner touts a Scrooge musical over diversions like "knife fighting for this year's top toy," especially when you can describe "I Hate People" as a "secret Republican theme song": When it comes to…