On Friday's PBS Newshour, host Judy Woodruff joined liberal columnist Mark Shields in declaring that the House GOP's conservative wing is holding the Congress "hostage," with allegedly right-leaning regular and New York Times columnist David Brooks then complaining that Tea Partiers are good at "destruction," but not "construction." Brooks further griped that, "to get elected, especially as a Republican," there is an incentive for "radical rhetoric," referring to the situation as a "mental problem."
Congress
By Kyle Drennen | October 9, 2015 | 1:12 PM EDT
On Friday, all three broadcast networks read from the same liberal script as hosts and correspondents predicted doom for the Republican Party following Kevin McCarthy’s withdrawal from the race for Speaker of the House. Leading off NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie breathlessly proclaimed: “Congress in chaos. House Republicans racing to find a new speaker this morning. Bitterly divided Republicans now scrambling for a replacement.”
By Curtis Houck | October 9, 2015 | 12:27 PM EDT
The morning after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy shocked Congress by announcing he was dropping out of the race to become the next Speaker of the House, CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today sprinted over to their analysts to tear into the “really pathetic” conservatives for creating a “chaotic” situation for the House that shows they’re “impossible to run.”
By Brad Wilmouth | October 8, 2015 | 11:31 PM EDT
As CNN's John King made appearances on the news network on Thursday to discuss the race to replace House Speaker John Boehner, the CNN correspondent suggested that conservative Tea Party members lack understanding of Civics 101 in trying to press their agenda in the House. In a later appearance, after the announcement that Rep. Kevin McCarthy was dropping out of the race, King used the words "hostage crisis" to describe the situation.
By Curtis Houck | October 8, 2015 | 3:07 PM EDT
To the surprise of no one, MSNBC ran to find the nearest token Republicans it could after shocking news that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) dropped out of Speaker of the House race and once such person was MSNBC political analyst and former 2008 McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt, who railed against the GOP for “hunting heretics” and not “converts.”
By Kyle Drennen | October 8, 2015 | 11:12 AM EDT
On Thursday, NBC’s Today joined CNN in promoting the latest issue of People magazine, which demanded congressional action on gun violence. At the top of the morning show, co-host Savannah Guthrie heralded: “People gets political. The glossy magazine known more for its celebrity scoops and red-carpet fashions wades into one of the most controversial issues in America. Is the magazine taking sides?”
By Curtis Houck | October 6, 2015 | 10:00 PM EDT
Following the lead of Tuesday’s Today show, NBC Nightly News continued its offensive against 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio for his attendance record in the U.S. Senate (despite previous precedent) and warned that his rise in the polls could result in Rubio suffering the same fate as failed candidate Scott Walker.
Vox’s Matthew Yglesias: Hillary Does ‘What She Can Get Away With,’ and That’s the Kind of President Democrats Need
By Tom Johnson | October 6, 2015 | 9:28 PM EDT The antics of the former major-league baseball player Manny Ramirez were frequently described as “just Manny being Manny.” Yglesias suggests that Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised use of a private email server was just Hillary being Hillary, and that that’s a good thing.
In a Tuesday article, Yglesias wrote that “from her adventures in cattle trading to chairing a policymaking committee in her husband's White House to running for Senate in a state she'd never lived in…to her email servers, Clinton is clearly more comfortable than the average person with violating norms and operating in legal gray areas.” That modus operandi, he argued, is what liberals will need in the post-Obama years: “Democrats have almost no chance of securing a majority in the US Senate and even worse odds of securing a majority in the House. So if there is a future for making progressive policy, that future is executive action."
By Brad Wilmouth | October 6, 2015 | 6:28 PM EDT
Appearing as a guest on Monday's The Nightly Show on Comedy Central, during a discussion of recent mass shootings, CNN host Ashleigh Banfield declared that it is "amazing" that, although "those who support gun ownership and gun rights" treat the Second Amendment as "unassailable," they wish to "tear apart the Fourth Amendment" to fight terrorism.
Near the end of the show, after The Nightly Show contributor Andy Yard cracked that he was surprised that no gun laws were passed after the Sandy Hook attack because "little white kids got shot," since "anytime something happens to little white kids, 'Oh, [bleep].'" Banfield moments later took aim at those who oppose more gun laws:
By Kyle Drennen | October 6, 2015 | 3:30 PM EDT
On MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on Tuesday, Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty proclaimed that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s comments about the Benghazi investigation had granted Hillary Clinton immunity from scandal: “...the Kevin McCarthy thing has been not only a political gift but it has been sort of a ‘get out of jail free’ card for her to sort of abandon the kind of semi-contrite position she had been taking before, and to come out on offense.”
By Brad Wilmouth | October 6, 2015 | 2:39 PM EDT
On Monday's All In on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes repeated the discredited claim that originated with a liberal blogger that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise spoke at a convention for the European-American Unity and Rights Organization -- founded by white supremacist David Duke -- in the congressman's home state of Louisiana in 2002.
By Kyle Drennen | October 6, 2015 | 11:52 AM EDT
One day after treating Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to a fawning one-hour town hall with her biggest fans, on Tuesday, NBC’s Today took a more hardball approach with Republican contender Marco Rubio. Co-host Matt Lauer pressed the Florida Senator on his attendance record: “29% of the time over the last year you not in attendance when votes were taken in the Senate....Are you placing your own personal ambitions above your responsibilities to your constituents down in Florida?”