Conservatives & Republicans

Two U.S. Senators -- one Republican, the other a socialist who votes with the Democrats -- are outside candidates for president. Both were profiled in Monday's New York Times, but with quite different results. While Rand Paul's anti-surveillance crusade was caricatured as cynical "sloganeering," socialist Bernie Sanders' modest Iowa crowds (100 people instead of 50?) were hailed as a liberal…

On Sunday, HBO's John Oliver gave the latest evidence that the last acceptable prejudice is bigotry against Christianity, especially anti-Catholicism. Oliver blasted the Vatican secretary of state's "defeat for humanity" condemnation of Ireland's vote that legalized same-sex marriage: "Okay, settle down a little, Catholic Church. Remember, you're an organization whose victories for humanity…

One doesn't know what to do with the rubbish which follows beyond noting it and hoping that the ridicule which results will somehow and in some way have some kind of impact. Despite 6-1/2 years of horrid governance and dozens of acknowledged scandals, several of which a few of the credible remaining outposts of liberal thought have actually agreed are scandals, David Brooks, the New York Times's…

The New York Times classless liberal columnist Paul Krugman has a reputation for exploiting tragedy for partisan gain, and did so again Sunday afternoon, writing about former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, accused of using hush money to cover up sexual misconduct with a former student: "Defense of traditional values played a big role in the 2004 campaign....But what we’re now learning…

When did Ronald Reagan’s tenure as president of the United States end? Officially, on January 20, 1989, but Washington Monthly blogger D. R. Tucker posits that in a sense Reagan stayed in office well after that. In a Saturday post, Tucker asserted that in 1988, some right-wing “ideologues” sought to “artificially extend the Reagan administration past its constitutionally limited time by propping…

Friday morning, Kyle Drennen at NewsBusters covered retiring Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer's appearance on CBS This Morning. Schieffer went into the same predictable whines seemingly every retiring establishment press reporter does as they're about to leave: there's too much money in politics, we can't control the news like we used to, congressional gridlock has never been worse, blah-blah-…

Facts are such inconvenient things. Especially financial facts and figures. On Tuesday, Rebecca Shabad at the Hill composed a 34-paragraph report entitled "Washington is ready to spend." Really? When have Congress or the White House not been ready to spend? Oh, I get it. She really means that they're getting ready to spend more. How much more? Readers will search in vain for anything beyond a…

A recent Gallup poll found that 31 percent of Americans self-identify as social liberals, and that an equal percentage call themselves social conservatives -- the first time since Gallup began conducting such surveys in 1999 that conservatives haven’t outnumbered liberals. On Tuesday, pundit Michael Tomasky seized on this development as an indication that Republicans no longer will be able to use…

On Friday's World News Tonight, ABC's David Muir avoided mentioning the critics as he reported on the Obama administration removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Instead, Muir spotlighted how "President Obama [told] us back in December his plans to restore diplomatic ties with the Cuban government," and that during a January 2015 visit to the island country, "the children of…

Friday's Morning Edition on NPR did its best to try to promote the liberal cause of expanding Medicaid in Texas. Wade Goodwyn lined up six soundbites from pro-expansion talking heads, versus only two from former Texas Governor Rick Perry, an opponent. Goodwyn played up that "in hating the Affordable Care Act, the state is leaving on the table as much as a hundred billion dollars of federal money…

CNBC Washington correspondent Richard Harwood and the co-hosts of CNBC’s Squawk Box briefly discussed during Friday’s show the age difference between Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio that included Harwood knocking Rubio for “look[ing] like a schoolboy” compared to Clinton.

Wrapping up a live interview with Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday’s MSNBC Live, anchor Thomas Roberts invited the left-wing congressional leader to attack Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio: “...we have the sound from the interview that Marco Rubio gave, where he painted a pretty broad brush in a characterization about those for and against marriage equality.…

In a Tuesday post for Slate, lefty pundit Marcotte explored the religious right’s fascination with (and perhaps exploitation of) the Duggar family and how it might change in light of the Josh Duggar sexual-abuse scandal. “The Duggars' [religious] extremism elicited admiration and maybe a little envy among the ranks” of Christian conservatives, Marcotte commented, “but perhaps now Republicans will…

Willie Geist wondered out loud what would happen to a Republican candidate who had written that women fantasize about being raped--and Joe Scarborough questioned whether he would he still be in the race. But when it's a candidate for the Dem presidential nomination who had written those words, well, that's a different story. On today's Morning Joe, when Scarborough raised the matter of Bernie…