Talking Points Memo

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…

Though both Jonathan Chait and Amanda Marcotte approve of same-sex marriage, they differed on Monday in their assessment of the case against it. Chait, of New York magazine, claimed that anti-gay-marriage arguments have been pitiful and consequently were doomed from the get-go. He declared that “preventing gay people from marrying each other serves no coherent purpose. Allowing them to marry…

Group loyalty is a big part of politics on both sides of the fence, but as far as lefty pundit Marcotte is concerned, it’s become so inflated on the right that it often crowds out crucial things like “basic common sense.” In a Friday Talking Points Memo column, Marcotte asserted that “conservatives are going way too far with this knee-jerk tendency to believe ‘their’ people can do no wrong and…

The Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature may soon weaken protections for tenured professors in the state’s university system. Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Marshall believes that Gov. Scott Walker’s enthusiastic support for tenure reform is “driven in part by right-wing ideology and in part by the palpable animus Walker himself holds to people who managed to get an education.”…

Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall sees a pattern of self-deception among Clinton-loathing conservatives. Marshall acknowledges that Bill and Hillary Clinton routinely “play close to the line” and “refus[e] to play by rules tighter than those applied to anyone else,” but argues that right-wingers fool themselves when they insist that behind those tendencies lies criminality…

Hillary Clinton is not the incumbent president, but otherwise is in a similar position to Barack Obama’s in the spring of 2011: she’s already next year’s presumptive Democratic nominee but has, at best, an educated guess as to who her Republican opponent will be. In the meantime, recommended lefty pundit Marcotte in a Monday piece for Talking Points Memo, Hillary should decide to run as a “bitch…

Conor P. Williams really enjoys watching the amazing race -- not the CBS program, but the race for the Republican presidential nomination, which Williams called “my favorite TV show” in a Monday column on Talking Points Memo. For Williams, much of the “entertainment value” of the GOP contest lies in its right-wing extremism: “This is a show where the American conservative id fully unravels in…

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.”

Jonathan Chait, Paul Waldman, and Amanda Marcotte each discuss how the Wisconsin governor and probable presidential candidate has responded to recent questions about issues including evolution, Obama’s religious beliefs, and Obama’s patriotism, as well as how his answers might play with the “paranoid” Republican base that thinks, in Waldman’s words, that “Obama is The Other, an alien presence…

In her Talking Points Memo column, Marcotte writes that King v. Burwell itself is ridiculous but par for the course: “Exploiting the obsessions and fantasies of rightwing cranks…has [been] the standard operating procedure of conservative leadership for decades now. But that the Supreme Court is elevating this kind of talk radio madness to the highest court in the land takes this to another level…

Alana Levinson goes after Biden for his “lecherous” comments that fit “the classic definition of sexual harassment.” She admits that liberals generally overlook Biden’s boo-boos because “we like his politics. In terms of women’s issues, he’s got the gold stars…He’s pro-choice and…he introduced the Violence Against Women Act.”

Ed Kilgore (at Talking Points Memo) and Mark Kleiman (at the Washington Monthly) agree that the Republican party has a serious racism problem but differ on what the GOP could or will do about it.

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,…

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.”