Free Republic

The Big Lie, as it quickly became known, was that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. He’s still out there peddling this nonsense, and a lot of people still believe it, though thankfully, they constitute a clear minority of voters. But now there’s a new lie being peddled. Call it Big Lie Two. Trump has been hawking this one for a while too, but it has been, to my mind, oddly little remarked-upon. That needs to change: Big Lie Two is more (Excerpt) ...

...You’re probably thinking at this juncture that the point of this column is to make fun of red states. No. The point of this column is to denounce them. Their willful anti-science ignorance is going to prolong this pandemic by months (at least) and lead to thousands of needless deaths...Almost worse, though, is how this anti-science fanaticism is perverting the meaning of the concept of freedom. This is dangerous for democracy in ways most people aren’t even thinking about right now.... Incredibly, the right has now established the “principle” that people can engage in potentially harmful action without any expectation...

By Michael Tomasky thedailybeast.com — OUR PLATFORM AIN’T STRONGIt’s not just Sanders and the electability question. The whole field, while all of them seem like good, dedicated people, has disappointed. BEAST INSIDENew Hampshire is voting. I remember when this used to be an exciting day. Even if my candidate didn’t win, which he (they were all men) usually didn’t, I loved both the reliable rituals and the unexpected little accidents. New Hampshire is voting. I remember when this used to be an exciting day. Even if my candidate didn’t win, which he (they were all men) usually didn’t, I loved...

When thoughtful conservatives and Republicans voted for Donald Trump in 2016, they did so in part because they knew that he would be among the nation's most consequential presidents, regardless of his occasional lapses in decorum or the steep learning curve he might face. This is because conservatives knew that the next president would be called on to fill the huge backlog of judicial vacancies that accumulated during the last years of Barack Obama's presidency. In addition, many other federal judges were approaching retirement age, so it stood to reason that the opportunity to remold the judiciary would be vast....

Something changed last weekend, did it not? The firing of Andrew McCabe. The statement by Trump lawyer John Dowd to The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff that Robert Mueller should end his probe soon. Donald Trump’s tweetstorm just after that, his first tweets mentioning Mueller by name along with promises by aides that more attacks are on the way. The amped-up speculation that Trump will fire Jeff Sessions and replace him with someone who hasn’t recused himself so that someone can fire Mueller. Somewhere in there also came an official reassurance by Trump lawyer Ty Cobb that the president has no...

Trickle-down economics died last Tuesday. The post-election chatter has been dominated by demographics, Latinos, women, and the culture war. But economics played a strong and even pivotal role in this election too, and Reaganomics came out a huge loser, while the Democrats have started to wrap their arms around a simple, winning alternative: the idea that government must invest in the middle class and not the rich. It’s middle-out economics instead of trickle-down, and it won last week and will keep on winning. Supply side was rejected. And in its place, voters went for an economic vision that says: don’t...

You want predictions? After a year like this?! Who knows. I will say in my defense that after Donald Trump went after John McCain, and nearly everybody in Punditland was saying that’s it, he’s cooked, I wrote no, not so fast. Five-plus months later, that column reads pretty well! So here I go. Who Will Be the Republican Presidential Nominee?: As I write these words, I’m gonna go ahead and say Ted Cruz, although I actually kinda think it will be Trump, and I’m aware that I’m just saying Cruz to sound respectable (Cruz! Respectable!). Marco Rubio...well, here’s the thing....

He’s the GOP’s strongest candidate, right? But what if he can’t win a single early primary? The Rubio problem no one is talking about—yet. Everybody I know, I mean everybody, thinks Marco Rubio is the strongest Republican candidate. Yes, there’s a debate about how strong. Some say he’d beat Hillary Clinton, some say that what with some of the extreme positions he’s taken so far in this race, he’d be hard-pressed to do much better than Mitt Romney’s 206 electoral votes plus maybe his own Florida. So there’s a debate about that. But there ain’t much debate that he’s the,...

Donald Trump is truly bringing out the best in everyone this Christmas season and that’s just as true among liberals as conservatives. (I’ve given up on sarcasm tags in these articles.) Seriously, if you’d like a look at the type of honest debate partners who are staring across the aisle at you this season, look no further than the Daily Beast’s own Michael Tomasky. He’s very worried about the current state of the GOP and wants to warn you all against slipping further into a futile maelstrom of racism and hate. With that in mind, he reminds us that Republicans...

Sure, she’s had a rough few months, but she’s still the massive favorite to win the Democratic nomination. But more than that, it’s clearer than ever that these people are jokers. Well, that was all kind of...interminable. For a time there in the middle, I thought Ben Carson had strolled out to perform some elective surgery. I guess we kind of agree that Carly Fiorina won, since she did manage to convey some real or at least manufactured-real passion on about three or four occasions. But you wanna know who really won that debate? Hillary Clinton. Go ahead, go ahead,...

With the recent defeat of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu — which leaves three Democratic Southern U.S. Senators — the common wisdom is that Democrats should bid farewell to the South. Even with favorable changing national demographics that benefit Democrats, an abandonment of the South and, on a larger scale, a viable moderate wing would be a mistake. Recently, writer Michael Tomasky argued that the South, a “reactionary, prejudice-infested” region, should be left to Republicans to create a “free market Jesus paradise.” Few sentiments better show what is wrong with Democrats today and why ironic Republican arguments that it is the...

Michael Tomasky is not content to argue, in the wake of Mary Landrieu's defeat, that Democrats should write off the South as politically unfriendly territory.  In his Daily Beast item of today, Tomasky goes to great lengths to trash the region in the ugliest of terms. "Reactionary, prejudice-infested, fetid, reject[ing] nearly everything that’s good about this country, just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment," is how Tomasky slurs most of the South, saying "almost the entire region" is as he describes it.  Remind us now, Michael: just who's "choleric?" Tomasky then has the temerity to shed a...

Michael Tomasky is not content to argue, in the wake of Mary Landrieu's defeat, that Democrats should write off the South as politically-unfriendly territory. In his Daily Beast item of today, Tomasky goes to great lengths to trash the region in the ugliest of terms. "Reactionary, prejudice-infested, fetid, reject[ing] nearly everything that’s good about this country, just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment," is how Tomasky slurs most of the South, saying "almost the entire South" is as he describes it.

Instead of demanding a bipartisan Benghazi committee, the Democrats must boycott this farce, whose sole aim is to humiliate Obama and Clinton.So House Republicans are zeroing in on the particulars of how the Select Committee to Mention the Words Clinton and Benghazi in the Same Sentence for as Long as Possible (I think that’s the official name) is going to work. On Tuesday morning, Nancy Pelosi issued a statement on the question: The panel has to be 50-50 bipartisan, she insisted, and all information must be shared on a bipartisan basis. Then, she seemed to imply, maybe the Democrats would...

... Well, it’s nice to see CBS bow to pressure from the left for a change instead of the right. See, Davies just published a book under the Morgan Jones pseudonym about Benghazi with an imprint that is a division of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by...CBS. So maybe 60 Minutes was pressured inside to hawk this guy’s story. So it’s already an interesting corporate media story and a black eye for Black Rock from that perspective. But what is the larger political relevance of all this? Well, Google “Dylan Davies Hillary Clinton” and you’ll see soon enough. Wingland...

When the Obama scandals pile up and Obama's image of integrity starts to enter the shredder, what do the most partisan reporters do to fend off the bad publicity? Try to portray the conservatives as "nutso" impeachers. At The Daily Beast, there was this headline Monday: "The Coming Attempt to Impeach Obama: The idea of impeaching Obama is industrial-strength insane. Republicans will probably try anyway, predicts Michael Tomasky." Tomasky portrays conservatives as "crazy" and Obama as the most clueless of presidents: he knew absolutely nothing about the Benghazi talking points? Then who elected him expecting a competent executive? Tomasky leads...

The Des Moines Register shocked many political observers Saturday by endorsing Mitt Romney for president. Clearly not accepting such a thing, Michael Tomasky, the Obama-loving correspondent for the Daily Beast, came out Sunday claiming the Register's endorsement "is little more than a practical joke": This Romney endorsement editorial, if you actually bother to read it, is little more than a practical joke. First of all, it has all the hallmarks of having been ordered by the publisher over the objections of the editorial board. Normally, a sentence like "the RegisterÂ’s editorial board, as it should, had a vigorous debate over...

Liberal journalist Michael Tomasky, in a column for the Daily Beast / Newsweek, voiced concern Tuesday that President Barack Obama has lost 16% of his support among U.S. Jews and may lose the elections in key states like Florida, come November. Tomasky, who is also the editor-in-chief of Democracy, analyzed Obama's first term vis-à-vis Israel and concluded that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu outfoxed the President. Tomasky cites a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, in which 62% of 1,004 American Jews surveyed said that they would vote for Obama, noting that this is a sizeable downturn from 2008,...

It was a rare confessional moment for Barack Obama. At a Miami fundraiser in mid-June, the president acknowledged that it’s “not as cool” as it was in 2008 to support him. It isn’t just a matter of fewer hip posters and viral videos. It’s a matter of votes. Rekindling the enthusiasm of African-Americans, educated white liberals, Latinos, young people, and union members—the Democratic Party’s most loyal and progressive members—will be a huge challenge. After all, you can only elect the first African-American president once, and the past two and a half years have deeply disappointed many liberals. “I know a...

The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30....