Ed Kilgore

Republicans may have to do some world-class needle-threading to come up with a presidential nominee who can win in November. New York magazine's Kilgore believes that even if such a candidate exists, it’s not the “hammer-headed movement conservative” Ted Cruz. “Unity candidates are reassuring and have a knack for making you see your own reflection in their soft and soulful eyes,” wrote Kilgore…

Since even some conservatives thought that Hillary Clinton won Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, it stands to reason that lefty bloggers would be happy with the way things turned out. In fact, not all of them waited until the hearing was over. Early in the afternoon, when Clinton still had several hours of testimony before her, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall observed that “…

Liberals and conservatives often differ over the concept of American exceptionalism, either on how to define it or whether there even is such a thing. Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore recognizes a limited version of American exceptionalism, one which pretty much boils down to a mania for guns. “America is mainly exceptional [italics in original] among advanced democratic nations not in our…

A few months ago, many liberals, including much of the bloggerati, were afraid that Walker had a good chance to win not only the Republican presidential nomination but also the presidency. Now that Walker’s out of the GOP race, several lefty pundits have weighed in on why.

On Friday, Washington Monthly's Ed Kilgore and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones contended that the conservative war on political correctness is a tempest in a teapot, and that being politically correct is pretty much synonymous with not being a bigoted jerk.

Several years ago, an episode of The Simpsons featured a Fox News helicopter emblazoned with a fictional slogan for the channel: “Not Racist, But #1 With Racists.” Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore seems to think that those words fit the modern Republican party. Kilgore acknowledged in a Wednesday post that “if you go back far enough the Democratic and Republican parties were very different…

Monday was a big day for journalists to suggest similarities between mass murderers and Republicans. Newsweek writer Nina Burleigh claimed that certain of Timothy McVeigh’s “militia ideals have gone mainstream” in the GOP, but Esquire's Pierce really put the ideological pedal to the metal when he likened Dick Cheney to one of the all-time worst genocidal maniacs, opining that Cheney’s relatively…

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait claims that for today’s GOP, “everything Reagan thought or did was presumptively correct, even the things that contradict the other things he did.” Specifically, “the Reagan cult is largely (though not entirely) a propaganda vehicle for the anti-tax movement,” even though “in reality, Reagan veered wildly out of step with anti-tax orthodoxy.” The Washington…

Bush seems not to share what Ed Kilgore calls the “vengeful rage about the alleged persecution of good conservative Christian folk” and what Peter Beinart describes as “the sense of Christian victimhood and superiority that lurks just below the surface in today’s GOP.”

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones claims that Obama’s executive action was meant to “gain Latino support for Democrats and provoke an insane counterreaction from Republicans” and concludes that Obama “succeeded brilliantly on both counts.” Meanwhile, Ed Kilgore of the Washington Monthly notes that “the Republican Party was actually competitive among Latino voters a decade ago,” but adds, “Now that it’s…

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…

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.

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.”

Ed Kilgore contends that if the Gipper had headed the Republican ticket that year, he would have lost to Jimmy Carter and consequently would have been an also-ran if he’d sought the 1980 GOP nod.