Talking Points Memo

Blogger: Clinton Foundation Uproar Another Manufactured Outrage From Right-Wing ‘Freak Show’
By Tom Johnson | May 20, 2015 | 5:56 PM EDT

Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall sees a pattern of self-deception among Clinton-loathing conservatives. Marshall acknowledges that Bill and Hillary Clinton routinely “play close to the line” and “refus[e] to play by rules tighter than those applied to anyone else,” but argues that right-wingers fool themselves when they insist that behind those tendencies lies criminality.

“It's never enough for the Clintons' perennial critics to be satisfied with potential conflicts of interest or arguably unseemly behavior,” wrote Marshall in a Tuesday post. “It always has to be more. There have to be high crimes, dead people, corrupt schemes. And if they don't materialize, they need to be made up. Both because there is an organized partisan apparatus aimed at perpetuating them and because there is a right-wing audience that requires a constant diet of hyperventilating outrage from which to find nourishment.”

Marshall commented that “freak show conspiracy theories…inevitably bubble up around [the Clintons], a symbiotic embrace of grievance, aggression and derp. It's painful to admit, but the two sides feed on each other.”

Amanda Marcotte: ‘Soccer Mom Hillary…Turns Voters Off. But Ass-Kicking Hillary Makes People Swoon’
By Tom Johnson | April 13, 2015 | 1:38 PM EDT

Hillary Clinton is not the incumbent president, but otherwise is in a similar position to Barack Obama’s in the spring of 2011: she’s already next year’s presumptive Democratic nominee but has, at best, an educated guess as to who her Republican opponent will be. In the meantime, recommended lefty pundit Marcotte in a Monday piece for Talking Points Memo, Hillary should decide to run as a “bitch who [gets] things done” rather than as “your mom,” an approach which fizzled for her in 2008.

“If Clinton is smart,” contended Marcotte, “she’ll put on those sunglasses and that black pantsuit and be the ladyboss we all wish we had: tough, smart, but compassionate. Soccer mom Hillary is too thirsty and it turns voters off. But ass-kicking Hillary makes people swoon. Hopefully, the campaign will pay heed to this difference.”

Lefty Writer: GOP Presidential Primaries ‘Offer a Showcase For Some Horrifying...Ideas’
By Tom Johnson | April 6, 2015 | 2:02 PM EDT

Conor P. Williams really enjoys watching the amazing race -- not the CBS program, but the race for the Republican presidential nomination, which Williams called “my favorite TV show” in a Monday column on Talking Points Memo.

For Williams, much of the “entertainment value” of the GOP contest lies in its right-wing extremism: “This is a show where the American conservative id fully unravels in public…The Democrats' primaries are relatively boring. Why? Because they don't have an empowered fringe. Their candidates operate pretty securely within the Overton Window of political possibility. The GOP's empowered, hard-right wing makes their primaries way more interesting.”

Amanda Marcotte: Conservatives Portray Obamacare As a Giveaway to Black People and ‘Hot Young Sluts’
By Tom Johnson | March 6, 2015 | 11:40 AM EST

When it comes to right-wingers and the Affordable Care Act, biology and race are destiny. That’s the word from lefty pundit Marcotte, who argued in a Thursday column for Talking Points Memo that the “fight against Obamacare has been about needling the gender- and race-based resentments of the conservative base.”

Bloggers Wonder How Walker Will Handle GOP’s ‘Ample Population of Lunatics’ and Their ‘Stark-Raving-Mad Beliefs’
By Tom Johnson | February 24, 2015 | 4:34 PM EST

Jonathan Chait, Paul Waldman, and Amanda Marcotte each discuss how the Wisconsin governor and probable presidential candidate has responded to recent questions about issues including evolution, Obama’s religious beliefs, and Obama’s patriotism, as well as how his answers might play with the “paranoid” Republican base that thinks, in Waldman’s words, that “Obama is The Other, an alien presence occupying an office he doesn't deserve.”

Amanda Marcotte: Obamacare Lawsuit Shows Conservative Movement Now Run By ‘Mouth-Breathers’ and ‘Lunatics’
By Tom Johnson | February 14, 2015 | 2:08 PM EST

In her Talking Points Memo column, Marcotte writes that King v. Burwell itself is ridiculous but par for the course: “Exploiting the obsessions and fantasies of rightwing cranks…has [been] the standard operating procedure of conservative leadership for decades now. But that the Supreme Court is elevating this kind of talk radio madness to the highest court in the land takes this to another level.”

Liberal Writer: Gaffe-Prone Joe Biden Seems to Have Been ‘Made in a Lab By the Editors of The Onion’
By Tom Johnson | January 11, 2015 | 7:11 PM EST

Alana Levinson goes after Biden for his “lecherous” comments that fit “the classic definition of sexual harassment.” She admits that liberals generally overlook Biden’s boo-boos because “we like his politics. In terms of women’s issues, he’s got the gold stars…He’s pro-choice and…he introduced the Violence Against Women Act.”

Lefty Pundits: GOP ‘Out of the Closet as Openly Racist’; Could Use a ‘Sister Souljah Moment’
By Tom Johnson | January 4, 2015 | 6:01 PM EST

Ed Kilgore (at Talking Points Memo) and Mark Kleiman (at the Washington Monthly) agree that the Republican party has a serious racism problem but differ on what the GOP could or will do about it.

Lefty Professor: NRA, LaPierre ‘Have Blood On Their Hands’ From NYC Cop-Killing
By Tom Johnson | December 31, 2014 | 12:09 PM EST

Peter Dreier, who teaches at Occidental College, writes that “for decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely that people like was [Ismaaiyl] Brinsley would be able to obtain a gun.” Dreier claims that even though the NRA’s “arguments are bogus,” it “has the money, and a small but committed hard core of members, to translate [its] idiot ideas into political clout to thwart even reasonable gun-control laws.”

Lefty Pundit: ‘Prospect of Another Liberal President’ Will Have Christian Right In a ‘Frenzy of Fear’
By Tom Johnson | December 27, 2014 | 3:36 PM EST

In a Talking Points Memo piece, Ed Kilgore opines, “Even if the supply side of theocratic impulses in America is abating a bit, the demand side will boom” because of “a large and noisy Republican presidential nominating fight in which Christian Right resources will be a fiercely contested prize.”

Lefty Blogger Josh Marshall: Gruber Uproar Based On Conservatives’ ‘Deception’ and ‘Bad Faith’
By Tom Johnson | December 10, 2014 | 6:03 PM EST

The Talking Points Memo editor and publisher contends that no matter what right-wingers say, Obamacare is “almost certainly the most deeply scrutinized, discussed and argued over piece of legislation of the entire 20th century and early 21st century.”

Talking Points Memo: Thanks to Gruber, Conservative Media ‘Finally Benghazified’ Obamacare
By Tom Johnson | December 9, 2014 | 10:38 AM EST

Dylan Scott writes that “Gruber-mania has gripped the conservative mediasphere in a way that few stories have, becoming another brand-name controversy like Benghazi and the IRS,” and that “the larger meaning was baked into Gruber-gate -- there is a hashtag and Gruber can now be used as a verb -- almost immediately.”