Steve Benen

Rachel Maddow Show Producer Agrees With Obama That GOP Is Globally Unique, and Not In a Good Way
By Tom Johnson | December 27, 2015 | 1:32 AM EST

President Obama considers the Republican party an international outlier, and so does MSNBC's Steve Benen. (That’s “outlier,” not “outlaw,” though, who knows, for them that may be a distinction without a difference.)

After quoting Obama’s recent comment that the GOP is “the only major party that I can think of in the advanced world that effectively denies climate change,” Benen, who’s also the primary blogger for the Maddow show's website, wrote in a Monday post that “hearing Obama talk about this got me thinking about other ways in which the contemporary GOP is an international ‘outlier.’”

Maddow Producer: On Foreign Policy, GOP Has Gone From Dominant to ‘Cringe-Worthy...Pathetic’
By Tom Johnson | December 21, 2015 | 8:48 PM EST

Though Steve Benen, who's also the primary blogger for the MSNBC program's website, is a true-blue liberal, he thinks highly of the foreign-policy chops of some recent Republicans. In a Thursday post, Benen wrote that GOPers such as Richard Lugar and Brent Scowcroft were “learned” and “approached international affairs with [a] degree of maturity.”

That was then; this is now. Benen touched on, among other things, Ted Cruz’s pledge to “carpet bomb” ISIS and Marco Rubio’s remark that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “not a mistake” to build a case that today’s Republican party “approaches foreign policy…with all the maturity of a Saturday-morning cartoon…The national GOP candidates are speaking to (and for) a party that has no patience for substantive details, historical lessons, nuance, or diplomacy.”

Lefty Bloggers on the GOP Debate: ‘A Two-Hour Slog Through a Septic Tank Overflowing With Bulls**t’
By Tom Johnson | November 11, 2015 | 5:29 PM EST

Robin Williams’s first album was called Reality…What a Concept. More than one lefty blogger implied that Unreality…What a Concept would have been a fitting title for Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate.

Maddow Producer: The Real Benghazi Scandal Is the GOP's Investigation, Which Should Be Investigated
By Tom Johnson | October 17, 2015 | 4:45 PM EDT

Michael Kinsley’s second-best-known contribution to political discourse, trailing only the “Kinsley gaffe,” is his observation that “the scandal isn't the illegal behavior -- the scandal is what's legal.” In a Thursday post, Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the TRMS blog, sought to apply Kinsley’s wisdom to the congressional inquiry into the September 2012 Benghazi attack.

“The Benghazi Committee isn’t investigating a scandal. The Benghazi Committee is the scandal,” declared Benen (italics in original). “There’s been some debate in recent weeks about whether congressional Democrats should continue to participate in such an obvious farce. It’s a worthwhile question that deserves an answer.”

Maddow Producer: ‘Republicans Abandoned Rational Thought In Their Contempt For’ Iran Nuclear Deal, Obamacare
By Tom Johnson | September 12, 2015 | 12:41 PM EDT

To Steve Benen, Obamacare is a high-quality dress shirt that Republicans treat like a greasy rag. Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, wrote in a Friday post on the TRMS blog that even though “every GOP prediction about the Affordable Care Act has been discredited,” conservatives keep trying to use it to tarnish other measures they oppose, including the Iran nuclear deal.

“If there is a compelling parallel between ‘Obamacare’ and the international nuclear agreement,” contended Benen, “it’s this: Republicans abandoned rational thought in their contempt for the idea, and despite pleas for an alternative solution to an important pressing problem, they offered nothing but slogans and cheap talking points.”

MSNBC's Benen: Kasich 'Not Even a Little' Moderate
By Ken Shepherd | August 10, 2015 | 4:11 PM EDT

While MSNBC host Chris Matthews may be over the moon about John Kasich, seeing him as the most "moderate" and ergo acceptable choice of the Republican presidential primary field, The Rachel Maddow Show host and msnbc.com contributor Steve Benen took to the Lean Forward network's website today to denounce Kasich as a hard-core rightie.

Maddow Producer: ‘Baffling’ That GOP Doesn’t Understand It’s Dumb to Play Up Hillary’s Wealth
By Tom Johnson | July 16, 2015 | 6:00 PM EDT

The New York Times reported last weekend that one line of attack American Crossroads and other Republican-leaning groups are likely to use against Hillary Clinton is that she’s far too wealthy to relate to average Americans. Regarding such criticism, Steve Benen says, in effect: Bring it on.

Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the TRMS blog, argued in a Monday post that the rich-and-out-of-touch charge won’t stick to Hillary the way it did to Mitt Romney because “Romney was extremely wealthy while pushing a policy agenda that would benefit people like him,” whereas Hillary’s economic program would help those nowhere near as well-off as she is.

Maddow Producer: John Roberts ‘Did the GOP An Enormous Favor’ By Upholding Obamacare Subsidies
By Tom Johnson | June 25, 2015 | 5:35 PM EDT

In the lead-up to the King v. Burwell decision, not a few liberals claimed that most Republicans secretly wanted the Supreme Court to uphold certain Obamacare subsidies because quashing them would have caused major political hassles for the GOP. The SCOTUS ruled Thursday morning, and before noon we had examples of the updated conventional wisdom: Republicans are happy with the decision, which will spare them harm in the 2016 elections.

One post in this vein came from Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the main writer for the TRMS blog. Benen asserted that chief justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, “did the GOP an enormous favor -- had the court created systemic chaos, and scrapped benefits for millions of red-state families, Republicans would have confronted an incredible mess they were woefully unprepared to clean up. Worse, there’s a big election coming up, and the GOP was poised to be on the hook for hurting a lot of people out of nothing but spite.”

Lefty Bloggers: Supreme Court Case Against Obamacare ‘Idiotic,’ ‘Preposterous,’ a ‘Con,’ and an ‘Ideological Farce’
By Tom Johnson | May 27, 2015 | 11:03 AM EDT

Tuesday’s New York Times piece on how the problematic phrase “established by the state” got into and stayed in the Affordable Care Act provoked a great many blasts from lefty bloggers at the plaintiffs’ case in King v. Burwell. Two especially heated posts came from MSNBC’s Steve Benen and Esquire’s Charles Pierce.

Benen, a producer for The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the show’s blog, claimed that almost no one believes there’s any merit to the plaintiffs’ case: “There are effectively two competing factions: those who acknowledge that the litigation is hopelessly insane, and those who know the case is hopelessly insane but pretend otherwise for the sake of appearances...The case [conservatives are] pushing…is based entirely on a lie.” Meanwhile, Pierce charged that the "preposterous" case emerged from a conservative “alternate universe” sustained by “wingnut welfare."

Current, Former Salon Writers Ponder Ben Carson’s ‘Ridiculous Thoughts’ and ‘Crazy Things That He Says’
By Tom Johnson | May 4, 2015 | 9:18 PM EDT

Salon’s Jim Newell doesn’t think Ben Carson will be the 2016 Republican presidential nominee, but he doesn’t see him as a garden-variety wanna-be. Rather, Newell believes that Carson is likely to incur one “spectacular humiliation” after another on the campaign trail. In a Monday article, Newell contended that the “free-flowing style [Carson] showed at the [2013] National Prayer Breakfast has been subject to diminishing returns in the last two years. The novelty is wearing off, and now he’s in a position where he makes a fool of himself just about every time his mouth opens.”

Also on Monday, Steve Benen, a former Salon and Washington Monthly blogger who’s now a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, opined on the show’s blog, "As a candidate for national office, [Carson is] likely to keep sharing ridiculous thoughts, which may endear him to some GOP factions, but which probably creates a ceiling for his presidential ambitions.”

NYT, MSNBC Uncritically Relay Reid's 'Five White Men' Rant Against Court's Hobby Lobby Majority
By Tom Blumer | July 9, 2014 | 9:15 PM EDT

On Tuesday, Harry Reid told the press that "the one thing we're going to do, during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women's lives are not determined by virtue of five white men. This Hobby Lobby decision is outrageous, and we're going to do something about it."

Obviously, Reid's statement assailing the Supreme Court majority in the Hobby Lobby decision is incorrect, as black African-American Clarence Thomas was among the five justices who defended the religious freedom of the Green family which owns and runs Hobby Lobby. Ordinarily, in an obvious gaffe involving a Democratic Party politican, coverage would be sparse. But in this case, there are at least two instances where an establishment press outlet actually reported Reid's statement without pointing out that it was wrong. One occurred at the New York Times.

‘Rachel Maddow Show’ Producer: IRS Scandal ‘Imaginary…Meaningless…a Nothingburger’
By Tom Johnson | June 27, 2014 | 5:58 PM EDT

There’s a saying that “life isn’t one damn thing after another – it’s the same damn thing over and over again.” That’s essentially what Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” argued regarding the IRS scandal in a Thursday blog post on the “TRMS” website.

Benen claimed that throughout “the imaginary IRS ‘scandal,’ there’s [been] an interesting pattern of events that serves as a template for every development. It starts with an alarming report, which is followed by scrutiny, which leads to details that make the original report appear meaningless.”