Conservatives & Republicans

On Monday, NBC Nightly News featured a full report on the letter signed by 47 Republican Senators to the leaders of Iran concerning its negotiations with the Obama administration over its nuclear program, but took the step of describing the letter as one that “patronizes Iranian leaders.” In addition, the report by NBC's Peter Alexander gave three times the airtime to Iranian Foreign Minister…

Did Campbell Brown just give away a dirty little secret: that conservatives are blacklisted in the entertainment business?     On today's With All Due Respect, Brown and John Heilemann were kicking around the results of a poll as to whom Americans prefer to replace Jon Stewart as Daily Show host.   Tina Fey came in first, with Dennis Miller a close second.  Said Brown: "I can't imagine Dennis…

CNN's Carol Costello badgered Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat on Monday's CNN Newsroom over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress. Costello played up how "some say the relationship between Israel and the United States has become partisan for the first time ever," and asked Mayor Barkat if he agreed. The anchor later asked her guest, "Couldn't you argue that Benjamin Netanyahu…

For the University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack, this past weekend’s commemoration yielded a “fairly astonishing” juxtaposition of President Obama’s “largeness of spirit” and Republican apathy, or worse. In a Washington Monthly blog post, Pollack argued that the low GOP turnout for “an event sacred to African-Americans sent an unavoidable message: These are not our people...Such discomfort with a…

One of the most discussed articles of the past week was Matthew Yglesias’s Monday piece in Vox contending that this country’s combination of a presidential system and increasing ideological polarization is a recipe for eventual political breakdown (the article was headlined “American democracy is doomed”). New York magazine’s Chait thinks Yglesias overlooked something important. Chait argues that…

Who said the Hillary email story is "a lot ado about nothing": a. Mika Brzezinski; b. Lawrence O'Donnell; or c. Michael Steele? You'd be forgiven for choosing a. or b., but it turns out that Mika said that the way Hillary handled the matter "wasn't honest" and O'Donnell said that Hillary's email system was set up "to defy" the Freedom of Information Act.  The correct answer is indeed c., Michael…

In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry infamously stated, in connection with an Iraq War spending resolution, that "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown of Florida has done her own John Kerry imitation. She was against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress earlier this week, and…

On Friday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell observed that the Republican-led Benghazi investigation gained credibility in the wake of the Hillary Clinton email scandal that it uncovered: "Well, the Benghazi investigation by the Select Committee was viewed by many as overkill. That it had all been cleared up back two years ago. And the fact is that some people, certainly the partisans for Hillary…

CBS News contributor and Republican pollster Frank Luntz convened a focus group on Hillary Clinton that aired on Friday’s CBS This Morning and while many expressed their frustration with the possible 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Luntz failed to mention both Clinton’s email scandal and questions surrounding the Clinton Foundation. As opposed to asking about these important stories,…

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.”

In a piece headlined “The Supreme Court vs. Reality,” Jeff Shesol claims that when the SCOTUS agreed to hear King v. Burwell, it showed that “most or maybe all of the Court’s Republican appointees will entertain any argument, no matter how silly, that can derail or dismember the supposed abomination that is Obamacare.”

Discussing the growing email controversy swirling around Hillary Clinton with Bloomberg Politics managing editor Mark Halperin on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie suggested it could resurrect another scandal for the would-be 2016 contender: “What about Republicans? This certainly hands them a lot of ammunition and breathes new life, perhaps, into the whole investigation into…

NBC Nightly News covered the Hillary Clinton email scandal for a second straight evening with another segment on Wednesday, but it took the position of downplaying the situation by portraying it as political and invoking Republican Jeb Bush’s email usage in comparison. Interim anchor Lester Holt updated “the firestorm over Hillary Clinton’s private emails” by describing those desiring to see them…

Socially liberal Republican consultant Margaret Hoover went on a tear against Dr. Ben Carson on Wednesday's New Day on CNN for his remarks earlier in the program on same-sex "marriage." Hoover twice attacked the potential Republican presidential candidate as "untethered to reality," due to his views on homosexuality, and for his apparent audacity to even consider running for top federal office.…