New York magazine’s Chait thinks that in a sense, conservatism and Communism aren’t such strange bedfellows when it comes to economic matters. In a Sunday post, Chait categorized “American conservatism” and Marxism as “rigid dogma,” whereas liberalism, he argued, focuses on “data.”

Chait contended that “liberals would abandon, say, new environmental regulations if evidence persuaded them the program was not actually improving the environment, because bigger government is merely the means to an end. No evidence could persuade conservatives to support new environmental regulations, because conservatives consider small government a worthy end [in] itself.”

Many of the lefty writers who analyzed Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate at the Venetian suggested that had the event been promoted as if it were a Vegas show, the marquee might have read “Fright Night,” or perhaps “Be Afraid…Be Very Afraid,” given how much the candidates hyped the threat of jihadist terrorism.

In a Friday article, Brian Beutler expressed a combination of disgust and resignation that the ideological “absurdity” and supposedly dubious autobiographical “veracity” of Ben Carson don’t matter to conservatives.

Beutler acknowledged that Carson’s poll numbers may take a hit because of the flap over the West Point “scholarship,” but wondered, “Could Carson’s supporters prove so uninterested in his genuine merits and demerits that they might look past this transgression? The very fact that this doubt exists incriminates both the conservative-entertainment complex and the nature of the Republican electorate.”

Since even some conservatives thought that Hillary Clinton won Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, it stands to reason that lefty bloggers would be happy with the way things turned out.

In fact, not all of them waited until the hearing was over. Early in the afternoon, when Clinton still had several hours of testimony before her, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall observed that “Hillary…looks poised; [Republicans are] radiating spittle.” As the hearings rounded third and headed for home, Esquire’s Charles Pierce sniped, “This was a performance piece for the people residing within the conservative media bubble…who already are too smart to be fooled by the Hildebeast and her alleged facts because Mark Levin has told them that they are too smart to be so fooled."

The stage for tonight’s prime-time Republican presidential debate will be occupied by businesspersons, U.S. senators, current and former governors, and, in Jeet Heer’s words, a “genial fanatic,” whom you probably know better as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Heer opined in a Wednesday article that Carson “combines extreme ideas with a comforting, trust-inducing persona” and explained that those ideas are tailor-made for the GOP base: “For those who aren’t on the far right, the dog-whistle references Carson made in the [Cleveland] debate to Hillary Clinton following the ‘Alinksy [sic] model’ and ‘taking advantage of the useful idiots’ might seem like gibberish, for instance, but they are part of a familiar litany on the hard right, where Obama and the Clintons are seen as thinly disguised socialist revolutionaries.”