David Atkins

There’s a famous line attributed to Henry Kissinger about the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s: “It's a pity they can't both lose.” Left-wing Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins adapted Kissinger’s quip for his Tuesday post about whether “vicious, ignorant megalomaniac” Donald Trump is “more contemptible” than “steely-eyed devotee of Ayn Rand” Paul Ryan.

Conservatives have objected in droves to a remark President Obama made this past week during his visit to Argentina. Addressing a gathering of young adults, Obama said, “In the past there’s been a sharp division…between capitalist and communist or socialist…but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works.” The right’s hostile response, contended The…

Many left-wingers still insist that supporters of Donald Trump are conservatives, but Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins finds Trump backers “far less terrifying” than staunch right-wingers. In a Sunday post, Atkins opined that even though Trump’s base voters tend to be mean and “ignorant,” movement conservatives are “more morally objectionable” because they believe in “economic royalism.”…

Over the past few days, a great many left-wing commentators have weighed in on Antonin Scalia-related issues, especially Scalia’s judicial legacy and Republicans’ refusal to consider anyone President Obama might nominate to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Highlights have included Slate's Dahlia Lithwick remarking that "sometimes it seemed [Scalia] worked overtime to earn your hate. He…

Ben Carson seems to be joining the likes of Michele Bachmann and Howard Dean on the list of presidential candidates who generated a lot of early buzz but became distant also-rans well before a nominee was chosen. According to Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins, Carson’s campaign also offers yet more proof that conservatives tend to be easy marks for scammers. “The libertarian-conservative…

In 2010, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas published his book American Taliban, which detailed his belief that “fundamentalist Muslims [are] basically hard-right Christians…American [religious conservatives] may be more constrained by American society and laws than their Middle Eastern counterparts, but…their goals are the same.” This past weekend, one current and one former Daily Kos writer…

In the week when a new James Bond film is coming out, it’s fitting that two lefty writers are both shaken and stirred by recent Republican blasts at media bias. In a Sunday article for Salon, Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson charged that “since the 1950s, Movement Conservatives have fought the fair examination of their ideas. They embrace a worldview in which a few wealthy…

Liberals and conservatives often differ over the concept of American exceptionalism, either on how to define it or whether there even is such a thing. Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore recognizes a limited version of American exceptionalism, one which pretty much boils down to a mania for guns. “America is mainly exceptional [italics in original] among advanced democratic nations not in our…

Conservatives tend to be religious, but is conservatism itself akin to a religion? Yes, opined Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins in a Sunday post. “Many consider modern conservatism to be an almost cultic movement,” Atkins wrote. “Its adherents long since stopped caring about the evidence or empirical results. It’s all about who can prove truest to the faith, and maximally annoy and rebel…

“The blue-collar white males who make up the GOP base” are between a rock and a hard place, suggests The Washington Monthly's David Atkins. The Republican party doesn’t represent their economic interests, but “their inherent racism, sexism and distrust of government” won’t allow them to vote Democratic. As a result, argued Atkins in a Sunday post, they’re waging an ideological “insurgent war,”…

Lumping one’s political adversaries with the vicious jihadists of ISIS seems to be the new new thing. Last Thursday, Dinesh D’Souza alleged that “the common thread between ISIS and [the looters] in Ferguson is you have these people who basically believe that to correct a perceived injustice, it's perfectly OK to inflict all kinds of new injustices...And all of this is then licensed by the left…