Conservatives & Republicans

Peter Dreier, who teaches at Occidental College, writes that “for decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely that people like was [Ismaaiyl] Brinsley would be able to obtain a gun.” Dreier claims that even though the NRA’s “arguments are bogus,” it “has the money, and a small but committed hard core of members,…

Each of the network morning shows devoted some time on Wednesday to looking back at the biggest news stories of year and, while they certainly could not have included every story in the allotted time, they all failed to spend even a few seconds on topics such as Jonathan Gruber, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, President Obama’s unpopularity, and the Hobby Lobby case to name a few. In…

The liberal New York Times and the Washington Post went into hyperdrive, Wednesday, devoting a combined 3800 words and three front page stories to a scandal involving Republican Congressman Steve Scalise. 

Earlier this evening, Clay Waters at NewsBusters noted the New York Times Editorial Board's blistering attack on Gotham's finest. The Times editorial insisted that the NYPD has "squandered" its presumptive respect in its treatment of Mayor Bill de Blasio since a bi-racial grand jury's December 3 decision not to indict officers on the scene in July when Eric Garner died on Staten Island. This is…

The Esquire blogger opines that the GOP is “the Political Party Of Dorian Grey. Steve Scalise is the public face. But, up in the corner of the attic, there's a portrait of the rotting, decomposing corpse of Strom Thurmond.”

Between Monday night and Tuesday morning, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC covered the news that a golf outing by President Obama at a course in Hawaii forced a Army to move their wedding location after planning to have it on the 16th tee.  While they covered the news, each network made sure their were plenty of laughs and golf-related puns throughout their 12 minutes and 4 seconds of…

The American Prospect’s Paul Waldman claims that right-wingers’ “belief in tax cuts doesn't rest on the practical effects. That's an argument that's meant to appeal to everyone, since it concerns something (growth) that just about everyone thinks is good. But the real source of the conservative support for tax cuts is moral, not practical. They believe that taxes are inherently immoral.”

In a Talking Points Memo piece, Ed Kilgore opines, “Even if the supply side of theocratic impulses in America is abating a bit, the demand side will boom” because of “a large and noisy Republican presidential nominating fight in which Christian Right resources will be a fiercely contested prize.”

As I noted almost two weeks ago, hundreds of protesters in Manhattan repeatedly shouted "What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!" during that city's version of the so-called "Justice For All" marches which took place in several locations around the nation on December 13. The New York Times failed to report the protesters' rants in its original coverage of the marches. The fact that…

Brian Beutler defends President Obama and Mayor de Blasio against attacks from the likes of Rudy Giuliani and contends that while “liberal political leaders in America don’t lionize fringe figures,” their conservative counterparts certainly do.

Republicans, remarks blogger Hunter, are “now fairly certain that having frothing crazy people running for president is what doomed them the last time around. But they won't stop…The Republican base—and I mean the frothy ones, the ones that show up in tricorner hats and demand the government get out of their Medicare—lives for these primaries.”

Mark Sumner contends that since the Reagan years, “conservatism has been more than just an argument about tax rates and regulat[ions]. It's become an open and honest war on the whole idea of governing.”

In discussing a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing announced Wednesday, the New York Daily News carried comments made by Howard Zucker, the state's Health Commissioner, about fracking's impact on public health. Zucker asked two rhetorical questions: "Would I live in a community with (fracking) based on the facts I have now?" and “Would I let my child play in a school field nearby or my family…

Leslie Savan writes that “as a character, and not merely a critic, of the right, [Stephen] Colbert held a unique key to the riddle of modern conservatism: How do they keep getting away with it? Why have so many conservatives turned into such small-minded haters and deniers of science, of reality?”