Krauthammer on prospects of future GOP deal with Obama: ‘This is Lucy and the football, squared’

Following the passage of legislation by both the House and Senate that would raise the federal borrowing limit and end the partial government shutdown, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer cast doubt on the future prospects of congressional Republicans finding common ground with President Barack Obama.

Krauthammer said not to expect Obama to deviate from his previous negotiations with Republican lawmakers on a special broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report.” He likened the interactions between Obama and the GOP to the Peanuts comic strip characters Charlie Brown and Lucy van Pelt, in which Lucy always pulls the football away right when she’s holding it for Charlie Brown to kick it. ‘This is Lucy and the football, squared’ [VIDEO]

“This is Lucy and the football, squared,” Krauthammer said. “Every time Obama has had a chance to do the thing that you would expect him to do if he has the vision of the world that most of us do, which is deficit is insupportable, we’re going over a cliff. We can see the future. It’s happening in Europe. The entitlement state is unsustainable. You’ve got to do something. All of us sort of know that instinctively. He is not interested. The reason? Everybody has a tactical explanation for why on this occasion he said no and on that occasion. ‘Elections coming up. It has to do with count.’”

Krauthammer went on to say it’s not in Obama’s nature to broker deals with the other side of the aisle, due to his ideology and vision to transform the United States into a liberal social democracy.

“The man is not interested in that,” he continued. “He’s a man of the left. He believes that Europe — that that is the kind of social democratic system in Europe, entitlement state safety net — that is the just society that community organizer is thinking of. And that is why time after time he turns it down and that is why I predict he will again turn it down, even though he can have a great political victory on tax reform. He won’t accept it, unless you raise taxes.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Krauthammer Op-ed: The Fruits Of Epic Incompetence

The president of the United States takes to the airwaves to urgently persuade the nation to pause before doing something it has no desire to do in the first place.

Strange. And it gets stranger still. That “strike Syria, maybe” speech begins with a heart-rending account of children consigned to a terrible death by a monster dropping poison gas. It proceeds to explain why such behavior must be punished. It culminates with the argument that the proper response — the most effective way to uphold fundamental norms, indeed human decency — is a flea bite: something “limited,” “targeted” or, as so memorably described by Secretary of State John Kerry, “unbelievably small.”

The mind reels, but there’s more. We must respond — but not yet. This “Munich moment” (Kerry again) demands first a pause to find accommodation with that very same toxin-wielding monster, by way of negotiations with his equally cynical, often shirtless, Kremlin patron bearing promises.

The promise is to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. The negotiations are open-ended. Not a word from President Obama about any deadline or ultimatum. And utter passivity: Kerry said hours earlier that he awaited the Russian proposal.

Why? The administration claims (preposterously, but no matter) that Obama has been working on this idea with Putin at previous meetings. Moreover, the idea was first publicly enunciated by Kerry, even though his own State Department immediately walked it back as a slip of the tongue.

Take at face value Obama’s claim of authorship. Then why isn’t he taking ownership? Why isn’t he calling it the “U.S. proposal” and defining it? Why not issue a U.S. plan containing the precise demands, detailed timeline and threat of action should these conditions fail to be met?

Via: Washington Post

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Krauthammer on Sending a Message to the Assad Regime Through Military Force: 'Send a Text: It's Less Expensive'

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer appeared on The O'Reilly Factor to discuss the possible repercussions of heeding President Obama's call for action in Syria, and the repercussions of not getting involved at all:





Via Fox News

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[VIDEO] Krauthammer: Vindicating the Vanity and Ego of a President Who's Become a Laughingstock Around the World Is No Reason to Go to War

Shamed into war?

By Charles Krauthammer, Published in The Washington Post

Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria — (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not “regime change”) — perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus.

So much for the element of surprise. Into his third year of dithering, two years after declaring Assad had to go, one year after drawing — then erasing — his own red line on chemical weapons, Barack Obama has been stirred to action.

Or more accurately, shamed into action. Which is the worst possible reason. A president doesn’t commit soldiers to a war for which he has zero enthusiasm. Nor does one go to war for demonstration purposes.

Want to send a message? Call Western Union. A Tomahawk missile is for killing. A serious instrument of war demands a serious purpose.

Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] Krauthammer’s Take: Higher Education Ought to Be ‘Organic’

Charles Krauthammer blasted President Obama’s speech on college affordability today, deriding the increase in regulation his proposed policies would bring.

“[I]s the federal government not intrusive enough in all other areas of our life and now it’s going to regulate graduation rates?” Krauthammer said on Special Report.

In a speech earlier in the day, President Obama proposed a new government system that would rate colleges on many factors, including average tuition and graduation rates. Krauthammer accused the president of wanting to nationalize higher education and said he was skeptical of the plan.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I think there are things that ought to be organic and independent and higher education is one of them,” Krauthammer said.

Via: National Review Online

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Krauthammer’s Take: Voter-ID Laws ‘Utterly Logical’

Charles Krauthammer defended the constitutionality of voter-ID laws and criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for seeking to re-establish Justice Department review of Texas election law under the Voting Rights Act. “It seems utterly logical that you would have to ask for a simple demonstration that you are of age, that you live where you live, you aren’t a felon, and in fact that you haven’t voted an hour and a half before,” Krauthammer said.

The syndicated columnist also argued that case law is on the side of the states; he referred specifically to the 2008 Supreme Court case Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, in which a six-justice majority led by John Paul Stevens found that an Indiana law requiring voters to show an official photo ID was not unconstitutional. “What Holder is doing is, he wants to stigmatize [mandatory voter ID] and to go after any state that actually institutes it,” Krauthammer said, adding, “I think he’s got a very weak case.”

Via: National Review Online

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Charles Krauthammer on the Third Presidential Debate: “It’s Unequivocal Mitt Romney Won”

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer reacted to the third presidential debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. He said, “I think it’s unequivocal Mitt Romney won.”

Krauthammer told Megyn Kelly on Fox News that Romney won both tactically and strategically. He assessed that Romney had to show the American people that he was someone they can trust as commander in chief.

During the debate, he said, “Romney went large. Obama went very, very small – shockingly small. Romney made a strategic decision not to go after president on Libya or Syria or other areas where Obama could accuse him of being a Bush-like war monger.”

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The highest point for Romney, Krauthammer identified as the point when he “devastatingly leveled the charge of Obama going around the world on an apology tour.”

Via: Fox News Insider

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KRAUTHAMMER BLASTS BILL CLINTON’S DNC SPEECH: ‘SPRAWLING, UNDISCIPLINED AND TRULY SELF-INDULGENT’

Reacting to former president Bill Clinton’s nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, Fox News contributor and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said the address was “sprawling, undisciplined and truly self-indulgent” and would not help President Obama’s re-election chances.

“I think it was a giant swing and a miss,” Krauthammer said of the speech.  “I don’t think it will move the needle whatsoever.

“It was engaging it was humorous, in some cases it was generous — I think there were more mentions of the Bushs than I heard in three days in Tampa,” he added. “It was also vintage Clinton in that it was sprawling, undisciplined and truly self-indulgent.”

Krauthammer went on to call Clinton’s DNC address “one of the strangest nomination speeches” even given.

“It was kind of an amalgam between the state of the union address, a policy wonk seminar and what sounded to me like a campaign speech for a third Clinton term — Obama was sort of incidental, he would be shoved in every once in a while,” he said.

“It is true that he made a lot of detailed rebuttals, that he is sort of the rebuttler-in-chief…but Paul Ryan can handle all of that in 10 minutes in his debate,” he concluded.

Via: Te Blaze

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