One of the most amazing things about Trump pulling away the paper-thin veneer of respectability hiding the rot of American conservatism is watching the frantic desperation of right wing pundits trying to cover it back up. From George Will to Jennifer Rubin to Charlie Sykes to ...read more
Once upon a time, back in distant past of 2004, Karl Rove (the Steve Bannon of his day) spun a fairy tale about how reality was under his control. From "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush": The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the ...read more
Last week, columnist Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote perhaps the saddest plea for help uttered by a conservative commentator ever. Writing in 'The Week', Dougherty literally begged Mitt Romney to enter the Presidential race "to save his party": Romney should be ready to enter ...read more
In an astonishingly rare moment of honesty Karl Rove announced that the only way to prevent gun violence in America would be to "repeal the Second Amendment". Speaking with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday in the wake of the Charleston shooting, the man known as "Bush's Brain" ...read more
Conservatives are freaking out (and even openly weeping) over a White House Instagram video that shows President Obama saluting a U.S. Marine on his way down the steps of Marine One...with a latté in his hand! Even the normally liberal Alec Baldwin had a curiously intense ...read more
It finally happened. We're only a few months away from the 2014 midterms and I thought maybe we'd see a longer roster of infuriatingly misleading campaign ads from Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS outfit. But finally we have our first big winner. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) is running for ...read more
We turn now to the Pope-is-Catholic and Water-is-Wet file to learn that Karl Rove lied on Fox News Channel today (shocking, I know), repeating that the Affordable Care Act covers abortion-inducing morning after pills. It doesn't. Today on Fox News Channel: "It was not about ...read more
If you're a politician, the last thing you want to hear is your name and the words "criminal scheme" in the same sentence. Well, welcome to Scott Walker's world right now. Just a little while ago, prosecutors who've been examining potential illegality during the Wisconsin ...read more
No single ideology holds a monopoly on wacky beliefs, unless you count ‘crazy’ as an ideology. But when it comes to the subset of wacky beliefs commonly known as anti-government conspiracy theories, it’s no accident that the American right embraces them with much greater ...read more
One crucial aspect of White House reporting that often gets missed is what actually ends up getting on the air. That's where the rubber meets the road and narratives are set. At Tuesday's White House Daily Briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to Karl Rove's smear of ...read more
Fox News contributor Karl Rove has opened up a new front in the War On Hillary by speculating that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have suffered a "traumatic brain injury" when she was briefly hospitalized in December of 2012. Rove's latest claim marks a change ...read more
Grace McDonnell was one of nearly two-dozen children killed by rounds of ammunition fired from Adam Lanza's AR-15 at Sandy Hook Elementary. Since then, a memorial playground was established with a commemorative sign featuring Grace's photograph and the message: "Celebrating the ...read more
I don’t trust the Republican Party. This goes beyond disagreeing with them on every single policy position they hold. As a party, they’re deceitful, manipulative, and wholly disingenuous.It’s not even a question anymore; it’s verifiable fact. Their brand is badly damaged and ...read more
The money men in the Republican party are clearly aware that they have a very, very big problem going into the midterms in 2014 and the general election in 2016. The problem? Their party is made up of 'fools' - apparently something they're now getting serious about. Writes Matt ...read more
Continuing in the longheld GOP tradition of making shit up, Karl Rove has come out swinging to defend George W. Bush's legacy as President. In a wide ranging interview, he made the following claims on an ABC interview: 1. “He kept us safe after 9/11," 2. "He moved to ...read more
If anyone could legitimately tell me what purpose Dick Morris serves, I'd gladly turn The Daily Banter into a propaganda wing of the Republican Party and join Dick in the fight against evil socialism in America. Apparently, Morris is a political pollster, consultant, and media ...read more
It seems even Fox News is becoming concerned with reality - at least for now, that is: Karl Rove's familiar 2012 presence on Fox News appears to be coming to a halt. New York Magazine reports that President Roger Ailes is limiting Rove and fellow contributor Dick Morris' ...read more
By Ben Cohen: We discuss the topic of Republican voter suppression in this weeks mailbag, but I thought it was worth expanding on a little given how serious the issue is. A reader asked whether we thought that the Republican's admission that they tried to stop minorities from ...read more
By Ben Cohen: Listening to the Right wing fallout after President Obama was re-elected has been absolutely fascinating to say the least. From Karl Rove's extraordinary meltdown live on election night to Sean Hannity's one-eighty on immigration, it's fair to say that the GOP is ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: I never thought I'd say this but I'm kind of liking Megyn Kelly right about now. I realize that in the past I've been pretty mean to her, saying that she "comes off like an extravagantly groomed chihuahua who's very angry about being left in somebody's ...read more
Welcome to this week's edition of The Daily Banter Mailbag! Today, Bob, Ben and Chez discuss the Republican Party's future, social media's electoral influence and Karl Rove's doomed political career. The questions: 1) I know you've talked about this before but given the beating ...read more
By Ben Cohen: If you listened to any prominent right wing media outlet during the week leading up to the election, you would have thought it was in the bag for Mitt Romney. Right wing pundits like Karl Rove, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer predicted a close but ...read more
A survey by the Pew Research Center shows Obama leading Romney 48% to 45% among likely voters. Pew estimates that Obama will take 50% of the popular vote to 47% for Romney. The 3% lead for Obama marks turning point from a week ago when both candidates were level with 47% of the ...read more
In case you missed it here's what we covered at The Daily Banter this week: Ben broke some news with a pair of exclusives. First, could Karl Rove steal this election, and did he steal the 2004 election, too? And Mitt Romney could, in fact, be a billionaire. We also followed ...read more
By Ben Cohen: I met Vanity Fair's contributing editor Craig Unger over a year ago in his apartment New York City while he was researching his recently published book Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power. Unger outlined the premise of the book to me and ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Desperate to reverse the losing streak of the last three weeks, the Romney campaign and its surrogates have, once again, rolled out the racially antagonistic "Obama Is Lazy" line of attack. It's nothing new, of course. Republicans and the Romney campaign have ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Yesterday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Chris Matthews was utterly relentless against Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus regarding Mitt Romney's unapologetic and obvious use of the Southern Strategy. Although Matthews didn't use the specific name of ...read more
By Kim Barker: Two conservative nonprofits, Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, have poured almost $60 million into TV ads to influence the presidential race so far, outgunning all super PACs put together, new spending estimates show. These nonprofits, also known as ...read more
By Bob Cesca: By way of a follow-up to my column yesterday about the Republican effort to disenfranchise millions of poor, elderly and working class Americans by passing Voter ID laws that require a government-issued photo ID in order to vote, I'd like to cover a well-worn ...read more
Chief neo-con propagandist Charles Krauthammer has been doing the rounds defending Romney's time at Bain Capital. Here he is lying about Romney's record: Obama starts with the attack on the [Romney] outsourcing. It’s shown to be false. If there was any, it happened after Romney ...read more
In case you missed it, here's what we covered at The Daily Banter this week!: We looked at New York Time's columnist Thomas Friedman's fast food intellectualism, and analyzed Obama's use of Karl Rove's election tactics for the 2012 Presidential race. Bob Cesca tore into ...read more
By Ben Cohen: Karl Rove took one of the least intellectually curious and incapable candidates in US history to two victories in Presidential elections - an extraordinary feat that has sealed his reputation as one of America's greatest political strategists. Rove used a simple ...read more
By Bob Cesca: As I write this column today, the Supreme Court could, at any moment, hand down its decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. I don't feel particularly hopeful about this one, given the crap-on-a-stick precedent of Citizens United and the ...read more
By Bob Cesca: I promise I won't write about every single Karl Rove Crossroads GPS anti-Obama commercial that gets wet-farted into the ear-holes of American television viewers. I'll only write about the most awful ones. And the new one is a $7 million lie. By the way, that's ...read more
By Bob Cesca: It happened for the first time today. The thought occurred to me that President Obama could lose in November. I was watching Paul Krugman's appearance on This Week, and the disconnect between what is true and what is fantasy -- dreamed up by the Romney campaign ...read more
By Bob Cesca: There are two bits of Republican fiscal hooey that have been injected into the national debate since I posted a two-parter here about the party's lies regarding the deficit and the debt. So now it becomes a three-parter. Both items of aforementioned hooey are ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Everyone thinks most politicians are absolutely full of shit. Too many Americans shrug off the political process under the assumption that politicians are liars and scam artists with little regard for their personal struggles and pet issues. So that's what voters ...read more
Image by david_shankbone via Flickr There are many people who believe Obama is in deep trouble when it comes to the 2012 election. They point to his low approval ratings, a tanking economy and an inability to get anything serious past the Republican congress. While this is ...read more
Yes, it has really come to that. The Republican party is now so extreme that George Bush would be considered a liberal in the current Presidential field. Michael Tomasky draws a comparison: Bush—and it leaves me speechless that he’s starting to look reasonable by comparison ...read more
Shocking. The Bush White House, particularly before the 2006 midterm elections, routinely violated a federal law that prohibits use of federal tax dollars to pay for political activities by creating a “political boiler room” that coordinated Republican campaign activities ...read more
Jeb Bush, who is the Republican candidate most likely to benefit by stopping his party from being so anti-Latino (he's fluent in Spanish and his wife is Latino), has an editorial in the Miami Herald advocating for more outreach to latinos. This is getting a big push from the ...read more
By Ben Cohen The man responsible for creating, packaging, and literally controlling every appearance of the least talented President in the history of the United States is criticizing the current President for having 'scripted' events. Yes, that's right. Karl Rove has gone that ...read more
The architect of Democratic control of the House, Senate, and White House has chimed in with his latest observation: the economy is a somewhat important issue. The funny thing is how, on Fox News, Karl Rove is treated as if he knows things you and I don't. But then, so is Dick ...read more
I'm really not interested in the merits or demerits of this non-story* about Joe Biden and what he did or didn't say to George W. Bush (I'm inclined to believe Biden, but whatever) but this quote from Karl Rove is hilarious: "You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you ...read more
Karl Rove is accusing the Obama White House of being too political. Yes, that same Karl Rove who sold America on the Iraq War in order to push up his boss' approval ratings. That Karl Rove. I should take this time to shill my upcoming seminar on What's Wrong With Nerds Who Like ...read more
Karl Rove is advising Illinois Republicans on how to pick up the governor's seat there after Blago's stain. But listening to Karl Rove? The "Architect" of Majority Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi, and in many ways President Obama? Go for it. ...read more
The Axe gets blunt with the architect of Democratic control of the House and Senate: But, Axelrod saved his strongest condemnation for the man who held his job in the Bush White House: Karl Rove. Of Rove's criticism of Obama's economic stimulus plan, Axelrod said: 'The last thing ...read more
As you guys know, I don't put a whole lot of stock in Karl Rove. I think his skill is middling at best as a political "mastermind" and I think my fellow liberals swoon too often and strongly to the latest "Rovian plot" that turns out not to be any kind of plot. That said, Rove ...read more
