Donald Trump’s angry and ugly populism has roots going back to Jim Crow-era race-baiters and Cold War-era red-baiters, including Joe McCarthy’s adviser Roy Cohn and his disciples, write Bill Moyers and Michael Winship. By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship There’s a virus…Read more →
Corey Robin, author of The Conservative Mind is one of the most credible scholars on the pathology of conservatism and neoconservatism. In the introduction to that book, Robin wrote that "[w]hen the conservative, looks upon a democratic movement from below, this (and the exercise of agency) is what he sees: a terrible disturbance in the private life of power.
OK, so this is the more involved second half of the post from 10 am-- slightly more abstract and something I'd suggest the Trumpf fans not bother trying to grapple with. We're going to do a little mashup of Aaron Zitner at the Wall Street Journal, Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman at the NY Times and Sean McElwee at Salon.
Sensibly, the New York Times is now calling for Congress to shut down the Benghazi Committee, as have many Members of Congress, including Rules Committee ranking member Louise Slaughter. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando went one step further and filed an ethics complaint today against Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Benghazi Committee chairman Trey Gowdy.
Yes, Texas extremist Ted Cruz looks a lot like ugly, dead, alcoholic neo-fascist Joe McCarthy. But the superficial similarities are hardly the reason why people have dubbed Cruz "the new McCarthy." One of the most reviled villains in American history-- right up there with Benedict Arnold, John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, Herbert Hoover, Sam Giancana and Nathan Bedford Forrest-- McCarthy could be an icon for today's Republican Party.
"I have sung for pacifists and I have sung for soldiers."-- Pete SeegerTrailer for the 2007 documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song"I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.
Plus: Worst spam of the day"When Ted Cruz lies, he appears to be praying. His lips narrow, almost disappearing into his face, and his eyebrows shift abruptly, rising like a drawbridge on his forehead into matching acute angles.
Hopefully you remember Corey Robin and his amazing, penetrating book, The Reactionary Mind. Yesterday he was tweeting about a NY Times apologia by Robert "Mr. Republican" Taft's grandson, John G. Taft, The Cry of the True Republican.
