Brian Beutler says it’s likely that Republicans “understand that voting restrictions suppress the Democratic vote,” but they probably view that “as a feature rather than a bug.”
Brian Beutler


Discussing the Kentucky Senate race between Mitch McConnell (R) and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), All In’s Chris Hayes cheered the Democratic candidate on, despite blatant falsehoods in her political ads. While Hayes did note those errors in the segment, he brushed them aside to say that in reality those lies are the truth.
The ad featured Grimes sitting next to a coal miner who claimed that McConnell voted to raise his Medicare costs to $6,000. Hayes stated correctly that this was false and that the man would “most likely not have been affected by the proposed Medicare changes.” Hayes then brought on Brian Beutler of The New Republic to discuss, at which point they both came to the conclusion that Grimes’s claims are really, actually, kind of accurate. Confused? You are not alone. [MP3 audio here; video below]

Watch your backsides, conservatives, because your vituperative, ill-considered criticism of both Bowe Bergdahl and the deal that freed him from the Taliban may come back to bite you.
That was the main message from Brian Beutler in his Thursday post on the New Republic's website. Beutler argued that the compulsively anti-Obama right's inclination to believe that "a massive scandal must be lying just below the surface" of the prisoner swap "precipitated a deluge of ugly actions and pronouncements" from many conservative leaders, including "a bunch of unseemly innuendo" about Bergdahl himself.

The title is borrowed from a post by Salon’s Brian Beutler that addresses what he calls the moral conundrum facing right-wing extremists when the Obamacare website starts working. Buetler, who in a previous post reveals he is not only an Obamacare supporter but a user, appears to be painting himself into a corner by speaking of when, rather than if, the site works.
Since he assumes the Administration will be able to get the exchange website fixed in the very near future, Beutler believes this will create a real problem for conservative opponents of President Obama's signature achievement. Beutler bases his faith in the first premise on “the confluence of two pieces of news last week:”

By most pundits’ reckoning, Obamacare is in serious trouble. Another poll is out today, this one from CBS News, and the findings provide no relief for the administration or its defenders. Just the opposite.
Obama’s poll ratings are down and so are the numbers for his sole major legislative achievement, his healthcare law:
