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.
Esquire
Bloggers: Global-Warming Deniers Are Traitors to the Planet, Paris Deal ‘One of the Great Triumphs in History’
By Tom Johnson | December 15, 2015 | 4:55 PM EST When it comes to global warming, Esquire’s Charles Pierce implies, it’s now conservative Republicans and a few hidebound Democrats versus pretty much everyone and everything else, including the world’s non-human animals and its plant life. Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait opined that the Paris climate deal was “probably the [Obama] administration’s most important accomplishment."
Blogger Charles Pierce: Reagan Established GOP Tradition of Being ‘As Full of Crap As the Christmas Goose’
By Tom Johnson | December 4, 2015 | 9:05 PM EST “There'll be scary ghost stories,” sang Andy Williams on a Christmas album of long, long ago. In a Monday post, Esquire’s Pierce suggested that “ghost stories” of a sort -- “obvious lies,” as he also put it -- have become part and parcel of Republican campaigning, and that “as with so many things, this all began with Ronald Reagan.”
Pierce argued that Donald Trump is “the logical end product of almost 40 years of conservative politics. Reagan was as full of crap as the Christmas goose, and in the same way that Trump and [Ben] Carson are. Trump has dancing Muslims. Reagan had the fictitious welfare queen in Chicago…Trump has weaponized Reagan's fabulism and that seems to make a difference to some people. But nothing that has happened in this campaign, up to and including the latest spasm of outright bigotry and fear-mongering, is new in the recent history of Republican politics. It always is the person who tells the best ghost stories who wins.”
Lefty Blogger Charles Pierce: Carson, Reagan Part of Republican Tradition of Selling ‘Snake-Oil’ to ‘Rubes’
By Tom Johnson | November 5, 2015 | 6:18 PM EST The heyday of patent medicine, medicine shows, and related phenomena has been over for more than a century, right? Yes and no, implied Esquire's Pierce in a Thursday post. While it’s true that (for example) Coca-Cola no longer is sold as a cure for impotence, political snake oil, Pierce asserted, has become the chief product of the Republican party.
Pierce’s peg was Ben Carson’s involvement with Mannatech, but as far as the GOP angle was concerned, “the process began with Ronald Reagan, the greatest patent-medicine salesman of them all. It was he who marketed the economic snake-oil with a wink and a smile…It was he who gulled the country with tales of Sandinistas driving jeeps across the Rio Grande, and dangerous Cuban adventurism in Grenada, while Marines were being slaughtered in their barracks. He was the best show in town.”
Bloggers Blast GOP Presidential Candidates' Media Criticism: ‘Reality Has a Bias Toward Journalists’
By Tom Johnson | October 29, 2015 | 5:38 PM EDT Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio put media bias on the front burner at CNBC’s Republican presidential debate, but conservatives and liberals differed sharply on whether what was in the pot smelled appetizing. Several lefty bloggers turned up their noses at the idea that in last night’s event and in general, the media favor Democrats.
Bloggers On Hillary Benghazi Hearing: Republicans ‘Stuck in Their Own Bubble’ Produce ‘Soft Porn For Conservative Activists’
By Tom Johnson | October 23, 2015 | 2:50 PM EDT 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."
By Tom Johnson | October 22, 2015 | 9:52 PM EDT
Not long before Joe Biden announced that he wouldn’t run for president, he drove Esquire's Pierce up a high wall (think the Green Monster) by saying, “I still have a lot of Republican friends. I don't think my chief enemy is the Republican party…I actually like Dick Cheney, for real. I think he's a decent man."
Pierce opined that Biden’s comments on Cheney were disqualifying (“Anyone who thinks Dick Cheney is a decent man does not have the judgment to cut his own meat, let alone lead the Democratic party”) and asserted, “Decent men do not oversee the outing of covert CIA agents. Decent men do not help deceive their country into a war and then walk away with the profits… Dick Cheney is the closest thing that American democracy has produced to a Goering.”
Lefty Blogger Charles Pierce: Congress ‘Has Been Broken By Crazy People’ (Namely, Conservative Republicans)
By Tom Johnson | October 11, 2015 | 8:42 PM EDT Esquire’s Charles Pierce seemingly would like a time machine to take him back a quarter-century so he could advise the Tom Foley/George Mitchell-era Democratic party. Failing that, Pierce wishes today’s Dems would at last act on his idea to persuade the American people that the Republican party is “thoroughly, deeply, banana-sandwich loony,” thereby “beat[ing] the crazy out of [the GOP] so the country can get moving again.”
“Republican extremism should have been the most fundamental campaign issue for every Democratic candidate for every elected office since about 1991,” argued Pierce in a Friday post. “The mockery and ridicule should have been loud and relentless. It was the only way to break both the grip of the prion disease, and break through the solid bubble of disinformation, anti-facts, and utter bullshit that has sustained the Republican base over the past 25 years.”
Lefty Blogger Plans to Pray For Pope, Whose Meeting With Kim Davis Was a ‘Hamhanded Blunder…A Sin Against Charity’
By Tom Johnson | September 30, 2015 | 9:09 PM EDT Esquire’s Charles Pierce is a graduate of a Jesuit university (Marquette). It’s among the many reasons he’s been a big fan of Pope Francis, the first-ever Jesuit pontiff, and it’s probably one factor in his vehement disappointment that Francis met with, and apparently encouraged, gay-marriage objector Kim Davis last week in Washington.
Pierce referred to the pope’s behavior regarding the “nutball” Davis as “a fcking [sic] blunder,” “a sin against charity,” and “the dumbest thing [he] ever has done.” He concluded, as if addressing Francis, “I will pray for you, because, damn, son, you need it.”
Bloggers Say Goodbye to Scott Walker, Who Didn’t Connect With GOP’s ‘Increasingly Disreputable Base’
By Tom Johnson | September 23, 2015 | 10:13 PM EDT A few months ago, many liberals, including much of the bloggerati, were afraid that Walker had a good chance to win not only the Republican presidential nomination but also the presidency. Now that Walker’s out of the GOP race, several lefty pundits have weighed in on why.
Lefty Pundits On the Debate: Fiorina’s a Misogynist, the GOP Is ‘Rabid,’ and the Evening’s Big Winner Was a Democrat
By Tom Johnson | September 17, 2015 | 10:21 PM EDT Among the insights: Fiorina "has a notable facility for delivering answers that thrill conservatives but fall apart under close examination"; a discussion of childhood vaccines showed that the party is "fervid, claustrophobic, recklessly insinuating, and, at the same time, utterly timid when it comes to extremism in its own ranks”; and the GOP as a whole is "wedded to the tenets of [George W.] Bushism — rabid, debt-financed, regressive tax-cutting, reflexive hostility to regulation, and a pervasive anti-intellectualism."
Lefty Blogger: GOP Debate ‘Most Fitting Tribute to Ronald Reagan Ever,’ Since It Was Full of ‘Complete Bulls**t’
By Tom Johnson | September 17, 2015 | 2:34 PM EDT Apropos of Wednesday night’s Republican debates, Esquire’s Charles Pierce worried that political reporters may be treating the race for the party’s presidential nomination as if it were a Brad Thor novel rather than a highly consequential real-world event.
“How do you cover a campaign in which 15 candidates are running on the basis of things that simply are not true…that simply do not exist?” wondered Pierce. “If the elite political press is going to treat fiction as fact as long as the fiction is delivered in a compelling, dramatic manner, then the country truly is lost.” He added, "The final fealty of the Republican Party to total and complete bullshit has been sworn.”