Conservatives & Republicans

While the ABC, NBC, and CBS morning shows on Tuesday all jumped on potential Republican 2016 contenders Chris Christie and Rand Paul being sympathetic toward parents skeptical of child vaccinations, all three broadcast networks ignored Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton holding the same positions in 2008.

The Catholic League's Bill Donohue blasted the L.A. Times in a Tuesday press release for hyping the recent protest of a dozen left-wing protesters objecting to Pope Francis's decision to canonize 18th-century missionary Juinipero Serra. By contrast, the liberal newspaper failed to cover the thousands of pro-lifers who marched in Los Angeles on January 17, 2015.

As many on the left rush to pin the anti-vaccine movement on conservatives, liberal New York Times columnist Frank Bruni pointed out on Monday's CNN Tonight that the cause is actually more prevalent on the left side of the political spectrum: "I think a lot of the anti-vaccine people probably would hate to hear themselves lumped in with the climate change deniers. But they're doing the same thing…

Following the unveiling of President Obama’s 2016 budget proposal, two of the three major broadcast networks made time to mention the story during their Monday evening newscasts, but only in the form of short news briefs.  ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir dedicated 16 seconds of airtime to the subject and while it brought up how much of the President’s proposal centers around tax…

Brian Beutler comments that “conservatives…are inherently skeptical of government interventions of any kind. Thus, Republican politicians who lean too heavily on…state action, even in the realm of something as essential to the common good as immunization, will run into problems.”

During a live interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on Sunday, President Obama told her how, at the White House, “[w]e make beer – The first president since George Washington to make some booze in the White House.”  While it may be true that beer was brewed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the President’s statement about former President George Washington also making beer there was far from accurate…

It only took about 15 seconds into a live segment NBC aired from the White House kitchen before Sunday's Super Bowl for President Barack Obama to commit a historical gaffe about the very place where he resides. He told the network's Savannah Guthrie that "We make beer — The first president since George Washington to make some booze in the White House." Heavens to Betsy. The White House's…

Hunter contends that right-wingers feel that the left is “out to get” them, and that they “consider…breaking the law itself to be a noble thing, when done in service to conservatism, which is why the various Fox News talking heads spoke of armed standoffs at the Bundy Ranch in approving tones and with references to the Founding Fathers.”

Yesterday's government report on the economy's growth, which told us that the nation's gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent during the fourth quarter, sharply underachieved analysts' expectations of an annualized 3.0 percent to 3.6 percent. The stock market clearly reacted negatively to the downside surprise. Bloomberg's take at the end of the day: "U.S. stocks fell Friday…

Even Charles Babington at the Associated Press, for once not the completely beholden Administration's Press, seemed to be having a hard time buying what Democrats at a meeting in Philadelphia were selling. Unfortunately, he decided to let Joe Biden's direct contradiction of his party's congressional delegation's sunnyside-up stance on the economy go unreported. In a video carried at the Weekly…

The nation’s major broadcast networks continued their blackout on Friday morning of not covering the U.S. Senate’s passage of the Keystone XL oil pipeline with zero mentions on their morning newscasts. Following the Senate’s passage of the bill on Thursday by a bipartisan margin of 62-to-36, the networks passed on even devoting a news brief to the topic during their Thursday evening news…

Ed Kilgore comments that Walker may have an “especially seductive” appeal to the Republican base given that “he won over and over again in Wisconsin without compromising with conservatism’s enemies. Indeed, he behaved almost like a liberal caricature of a conservative villain…Walker tells [right-wingers that] they…can win by confrontation, not compromise or outreach, and his three victories are…

The U.S. Senate took the step Thursday of approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a bipartisan fashion by a margin of 62-to-36, with nine Democrats joining 53 Republicans to pass it for the first time after failing to do so under the previous Congress.  When the major English and Spanish language networks aired their Thursday evening newscasts, however, the news of the bill’s passage was…

Hardball host Chris Matthews used a panel discussion about President Obama's attorney-general nominee Loretta Lynch on his Wednesday program as a convenient opportunity to slander conservative Republicans as seeking to repress the vote of Democratic constituencies in major cities.