Ezra Klein: Conservatism Was a Lot Better in Nancy Reagan’s Day

Vox editor-in-chief Klein doesn’t often look back fondly at the good old days of the conservative movement, but he did so in a Sunday post inspired by the death of Nancy Reagan. Klein thinks conservatism was at its best in the 1980s, for which he gives considerable credit to the First Couple of the era. Klein wrote that the “political genius” of the Reagans “was to shape the pessimistic, angry…
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Stahl Applauds Nancy Reagan Not Having President Promote Social Issues

Offering her memories of the late Nancy Reagan on Monday’s CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes correspondent and former White House reporter Lesley Stahl voiced her approval for how the late First Lady often pushed husband and President Ronald Reagan “to stop talking as much as he was on the social issues” like the abortion and the Second Amendment.
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NBC’s Look Back at Nancy Reagan Shows Her Combating Media Bias

On Monday’s NBC Today, a look back at Nancy Reagan’s various appearances on the morning show over the years showed her repeatedly combating liberal media bias demonstrated by the hosts with whom she sat down.
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Nets Cheer Nancy Reagan Breaking With GOP on Stem Cells

While remembering the legacy of Nancy Reagan on Monday, all three network morning shows made sure to highlight an issue in which she broke with much of the Republican Party – embryonic stem cell research. On NBC’s Today, Peter Alexander touted: “With Alzheimer's Disease robbing her husband's memory, Mrs. Reagan was again cast into a supporting role, with a new cause, a champion of stem cell…
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Colin Powell: GOP ‘Nastiness’ ‘Over the Top’ For Even ‘Jerry Springer'

On Monday’s CBS This Morning former Secretary of State Colin Powell came on the program to discuss the recently passed former First Lady Nancy Reagan, and her relationship with her late husband. Powell to took the opportunity to contrast Ronald Reagan’s “optimistic” presidency with the current GOP’s “nastiness,” that was “running us into the ground.” Unexpectedly, co-anchor Gayle King then called…
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CNN's Zakaria Likens Conservatism to 'Rise of Extremism' in Islam

On his Sunday program, CNN's Fareed Zakaria asserted that the relationship between conservative/Republican leaders and the grassroots was "similar" to the "dynamic" between moderate Muslims and Islamists: "A main cause of the rise of extremism in the world of Islam has been the cowardice of Muslim moderates...It is now clear that a similar dynamic has been at play in the world of conservatism."…
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Andrea Mitchell Uses Death of Nancy Reagan to Hammer GOP

Calling in to an NBC special report about the death of Nancy Reagan on Sunday, correspondent Andrea Mitchell was eager to use the former First Lady’s passing to attack the current crop of Republican presidential candidates: “...we know that she did not believe in extremes. That she believed in compromise. That she believed, as did her husband, in walking – in working across party lines....So I…

Maher Claims GOP 'Made a Faustian Bargain with the Racist Devil'

On Friday's Real Time show on HBO, host Bill Maher repeatedly accused Republicans of exploiting racism for political advantage as he asserted that the GOP "made a Faustian deal with the racist devil" and went on to repeat an old debunked claim that Ronald Reagan began his 1980 presidential campaign at the site of a racially motivated murder. He went on to compare the GOP to a house which has…
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'Morning Joe' Laughs As Hunt Reports GOPe 'Despair,' Heavy Drinking

Members of the Morning Joe panel got a good laugh today as Al Hunt reported on anguish in establishment GOP ranks. Hunt said that he "was at an event Saturday night with a lot of establishment Republicans and some Rubio people and despair so understates the case. [ Laughter ] I -- really, I've never seen anything like it. There was a lot of heavy drinking" after that. A bit later, Hunt imagined…

The Press Mocked the Reagans' Love For Each Other

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan died today. The Associated Press's Christopher Weber, in an otherwise predictably passive-aggressive obituary, got one thing right: "The Reagans' mutual devotion over 52 years of marriage was legendary." How nice of him to acknowledge that now. The fact is that while it was visible during Ronald Reagan's presidency, everyone with eyes to see could recognize the…
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MSNBC Uses Reagan to Spank GOP, Wanted to 'End' Cold War 'Not to Win'

As former Newsweek editor-in-chief Evan Thomas appeared as a guest on MSNBC Sunday to discuss former First Lady Nancy Reagan's passing, host Chris Matthews and Thomas used Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon to chastise the current Republicans for being too unwilling to compromise. After Thomas asserted that Reagan and Nixon "are rolling over in their graves" and recalled that Nancy…
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Cruz Shreds Media for Wanting ‘Coronation’ of Trump as GOP Nominee

Republican presidential candidate and Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) sat for an interview with CBS’s John Dickerson Friday afternoon in National Harbor, Maryland that aired on Face the Nation. Cruz lambasted the media for “hav[ing] a coronation” of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee so he could be viciously defeated by Hillary Clinton in November.
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CNN's Kohn Claims Trump Will Put People in 'Internment Camps'

Appearing as a panel member for CNN's live election coverage on Saturday, liberal CNN political commentator and Daily Beast columnist Sally Kohn hyperbolically predicted that a President Donald Trump would put people in "internment camps" and get rid of habeas corpus when it was her turn to give final thoughts on the day's news.  
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Nazi Card: David Brooks Suggests Trump Staging 'Nuremberg Rallies'

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, is it fair to play the full Nazi card against him? David Brooks--the fellow who was so impressed by the crease in Obama's pants--apparently thinks so. On today's Meet the Press, commenting on images of Trump supporters at a rally responding to his request to raise their right hands to pledge to vote for him, Brooks said "if we're going to get Trump, we might…