Conservatives & Republicans

So far this week, CNN's John King and Chris Cuomo on New Day have both felt the need to dredge up the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads exposing negative aspects of then Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military service and anti-war activities, as CNN personalities have suggested "hypocrisy" in Jeb Bush and other Republicans condemning Donald Trump's dismissal of John McCain's…

On Monday's CNN Tonight, Montel Williams targeted the activists who recently shouted down former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley at the left-wing Netroots Nation conference for his "all lives matter" remark: "I'm sick of the fact that we now have to think that this term only belongs to one community. You know, lives matter in America. Black lives definitely matter. But every life in this…

There soon will be sixteen Republicans officially seeking their party’s 2016 presidential nomination, but Gabriel Sherman probably would replace “officially” with "nominally." In a Sunday post, Sherman suggested that many of those sixteen are CINOs (Candidates in Name Only) who really are running for the title of big-bucks “political celebrity.” He opined that “when it comes to presidential…

On Monday's Rundown, MSNBC's Luke Russert repeatedly touted the supporters of the communist Cuban regime who rallied outside near the newly-opened Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C.: "I would say, from talking to people, those who are in favor of this outnumber those who are opposed to it...probably, at least, five to one – just from my anectodal conversations." Russert also hyped that "this is…

In Phoenix this weekend, "Black Lives Matter" disruptors crashed the "Netroots" convention, an event the Associated Press described as a gathering of "some of the party's most influential liberal activists." On ABC's This Week yesterday Bill Kristol had the temerity to mention some of the details of the chaos. Show host Martha Raddatz changed the subject faster than you can say "deeply divided…

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest held his first press briefing after the massacre of then-four, now-five Americans "at a military recruiting office and a Navy-Marine operations center a few miles apart" in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A mere three minutes into that briefing, thanks to the Associated Press's Darlene Superville, he was already on another topic: President Obama's…

A movie dramatization of the Stanford prison experiment opened this weekend, but if you believe Andrew O’Hehir, that’s not the first time the 1971 psychological study has been restaged in some manner. O’Hehir asserted in a Saturday piece that over the past few decades, “the Republican Party has been the subject, willing or otherwise, of a version” of the Stanford experiment, with the result that…

Historian Rick Perlstein, the author of three books (so far) on American movement conservatism from the mid-‘50s through the mid-‘70s, believes, in essence, that conservatives are tribalists whose central task is to promote hatred against other tribes. According to Perlstein, two recent news stories serve to illuminate that process, which, he suggests, involves an almost scientific-sounding…

Andrea Mitchell wondered if Chattanooga terrorist Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's "small-town Tennessee" upbringing had anything to do with his slaughtering of four Marines. Mitchell interviewed a high school classmate of Abdulazeez on the Friday edition of her MSNBC program and asked, "Were guns a big part of activity – social or other activity?...Did he hunt? Did he shoot? I mean, was that just…

On Friday's New Day, CNN's Alisyn Camerota set up Michael Douglas to sing the praises of the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran. Camerota asked, "This week was the historic deal with Iran that...reportedly, will cut down on nuclear proliferation. Are you convinced by this deal?" Douglas replied by going after the critics of the deal: "I think it's just so presumptuous of everybody to…

On Friday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie touted Donald Trump leading in recent polls as a problem for the 2016 Republican field: “He is having a bigger impact than a lot of people expected and that is leading to a growing war of words between the real estate mogul and his political rivals.”

As usual, much of the press has responded to scandalous behavior by leftist sacred cows by making the story about Republicans criticizing the actions instead of the scandal itself. On the one hand, are we really supposed to believe that only pro-lifers are horrified by the evidence that Planned Parenthood, aka Planned Parthood, sells the body parts of aborted preborn babies? Gosh, I hope not. So…

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…

Nicholas Confessore and Maggie Haberman at the New York Times studiously avoided talking about Hillary Clinton's campaign spending in their front-page print edition story Thursday ("Hillary Clinton Lags in Engaging Grass-Roots Donors"). Mrs. Clinton hauled in $48.7 million, but she spent a stunning $18.7 million. As seen in a table accompanying the Times story, that's more than triple that of…