Charlie Pierce at Esquire complained that Democrats refuse to make the case that “the Republican party has thrown its marbles gleefully to the four winds,” which among other things means that “crackpot” Joni Ernst has a good chance to win a Senate seat.
"She shouldn't be allowed into the United States Senate on a tour, let alone as one of its 100 members," he wrote. "This is more than just a message sponsored by the Committee To Not Electing [sic] Morons."
Charles Pierce thinks the campaign against ISIS may cause a spike in the national “derangement” that started on 9/11, and Jonathan Chait sees neoconservatives making the same mistakes now as they did more than a decade ago: “The hysterical threat assessment, the simplistic conflation of mutually antagonistic strains of Islam, and the complete lack of concern for the possibility of overreach.”
Plenty of commentators have predicted that Republicans will pick up seats in this fall’s midterm elections, but haven’t opined whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Then there’s Esquire’s political blogger Charles Pierce, whose gloomy forecast for the midterms is that “the power of the insane party will likely be enhanced.”
In a Tuesday post, Pierce lamented the impact of Republican madness on American foreign policy, stating that in a time of serious problems that include jihadism and Vladimir Putin’s designs on former Soviet republics, “the United States [is] scrambled and paralyzed by the kind of petty vandalism” that the congressional GOP has specialized in since President Obama took office.
Some politicians have the same public image throughout their careers. Others at least try to give themselves a makeover (e.g., the “new Nixon” of 1968). In a Wednesday post, Esquire’s Charles Pierce claimed that for the past decade, we’ve had what amounts to a new Al Sharpton, and that “the transformation began when Sharpton ran for president in 2004.”
Pierce noted Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley/Crown Heights “not-entirely-concerned-with-the-truth-of-things period,” but argued that in ’04, Sharpton the candidate “reintroduced himself to the country as a serious man with serious concerns,” and that “more or less, that's been the path on which [he] has remained ever since.” These days, Pierce remarked, “bringing up the sins of [Sharpton’s] past now seems as strange an avocation as summoning up Malcolm X's early career as a burglar.”
What's the matter with you, Charles Pierce? Have you no appreciation for how long it takes to craft and poll test a statement on the Ferguson shooting so as not to alienate the Democrat base while not harming your chances in the general election? Next thing I know, you will actually want Hillary Clinton to get her precious hands dirty working to support candidates in this November's elections on the way to her coronation.
Here is Pierce's blog at Esquire mockingly titled, This Is Mighty White Of You:
The Obama administration is in the doldrums, and not only because it’s August. Is it that the president has a short attention span, or that he’s insufficiently ideological, or have Republicans just worn him down? Three lefty pundits opined on the issue earlier this week.
In a Tuesday New Republic piece, Georgetown history professor Michael Kazin identified “Obama’s sober mistrust of ideology and partisanship” as an obstacle to progress and urged Obama to go beyond “pragmatism” (emphasis added):
President Obama never saw battle or even served in the military, but according to Esquire political blogger Charles Pierce, Obama and his administration now suffer from something akin to shell shock, the result of "constant bombardment" from the Republican forces of “unreason,” “illogic,” and “fantasy.”
Pierce argued in a Tuesday post that dealing with torqued-up craziness like that of the GOP is especially disabling for highly reasonable persons such as Obama. “This administration,” he wrote, “is slug-nutty because it is so rational. It is afflicted with the blind staggers because all of its senses are functioning ‘with painful efficiency.’ It has figured out all too well -- and far too late -- the source of the bombardment that has been laid down upon it daily for the past six years.” From Pierce’s post (emphasis added):
Early reporting on Tuesday’s Republican primary upset in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District indicated that Dave Brat’s stand on immigration reform was the main reason Brat defeated Eric Cantor, but Esquire political blogger Charles Pierce isn’t buying it. In a Wednesday post, Pierce argued that the immigration issue was less important than Brat’s opposition to the idea that “the national government should work at all.”
Pierce also claimed that Brat’s victory shows yet again that President Obama will never find common ground with today’s hard-right GOP, and quipped that Brat’s efforts to synthesize Christianity and Randian economics are “more appropriate to the Cirque du Soleil than to a political philosophy.”
Two prominent lefty bloggers wrote in separate Wednesday posts that even though the Tea Party label might have taken a hit in Tuesday's Republican primaries, the Tea Party ideology is riding high within the GOP.
Charles Pierce of Esquire opined that "[t]he basic lesson of last night's primary elections...is not to nominate morons" and that "this time around, being a crackpot seems to have been something of a liability."
There’s a slow but steady drumbeat of support building up in the media for an Elizabeth Warren presidential run, and MSNBC is playing a huge part in it. On Wednesday’s All In, host Chris Hayes chatted with Esquire’s Charles Pierce about what makes Sen. Warren (D-Mass.) so great. Hayes began the interview by asking, “[W]hat is it about Elizabeth Warren that people love so much? There is some quality that is bringing something out in people.”
Pierce, who wrote a profile of Warren in Esquire, made a flattering comparison of the senator’s speaking style to that of an iconic liberal president. He exclaimed that “she gets the same effect out of ‘golly’ that Lyndon Johnson used to get out of curse words.”
At The Weekly Standard, William Kristol protested the conventional wisdom that Americans are incredibly weary of war, and so won’t project strength against Putin or other geopolitical foes.
He concluded: “Can Republicans do no better than shamefully to emulate Somerset and Obama (‘I assure you nobody ends up being more war-weary than me’)? Will no brave leader step forward to honorably awaken us from our unworthy sleep?” This drove radical lefty Charlie Pierce to verbally explode at Kristol the “sociopath” from his pit at Esquire magazine:
The organizers of CPAC let left-wing crazy man Charles Pierce of Esquire wander the halls and “report” his findings.
Pierce poured out an entire bucket of contempt on Sarah Palin: “McCain should pay a heavy price for unleashing this ignorant, two-wheeled bilewagon on the country's politics. If you think she's a legitimate political leader, you're an idiot and a sucker and I feel sorry for you.”