Posted on 07/17/2010 11:32:00 AM PDT by Brices Crossroads
While I read Charles Krauthammer from time to time, I am not a big fan of his. In reading his column entitled "Obama's Next Act" yesterday, he pronounces Reaganism as good as dead, a victim of the first eighteen months of the Obama Administration. I rather think Krauthammer lacks standing to comment on "Reaganism" (whatever he means by that term) since he worked in Jimmy Carter's White House and tried twice to defeat Ronald Reagan both in 1980 and 1984. He was a speechwriter for Walter Mondale and I often wondered if he penned the immortal line (or was it the mortal line), "President Reagan will raise your taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."
I have heard Krauthammer on CSPAN and elsewhere opine that Obama is among the most intelligent men ever to be President. I suspect that he held Reagan's intelligence in somewhat less regard when the Gipper was running for President and while he was governing. Oh, Krauthammer did coin the term "Reagan Doctrine" and he came to favor the muscular foreign policy which Reagan pursued with remarkable (and virtually bloodless) success. This does not, however, entitle Krauthammer's views on domestic policy to any great weight, given his antagonism to "Reaganism" in the past.
Now, to his column. He begins by pronouncing ObamaCare both "historic" and "irrevocable", a definitive and everlasting change to one sixth of the American economy. Not only does he ignore the blatant unconstitutionality of the individual mandate requiring every citizen to purchase a private product (which is being challenged in the courts at this very moment), he completely ignores the mechanisms through which this program can be immediately defunded and neutered in 2011 when the GOP takes back the Congress. In 2013, the GOP will almost certainly have more than 60 senate seats and a filibuster will not be able to stop the outright repeal. This monstrosity has more than a few problems. But Krauthammer pronounces it final, res judicata, a fait accompli. It reminded me that Krauthammer was carrying water for ObamaCare in an August 21, 2009 column in the Washington Post when, in response to Sarah Palin's "Death Panel" torpedo aimed at the rationing schemes in the very heart of ObamaCare, Krauthammer told her to sit down and shut up:
"We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate."
Palin has subsequently been proven right (Does the recess appointment of Donald Berwick to the CMS leave any doubt?) and Krauthammer has been proven wrong, but I have heard no apology from him. He is just as wrong about the permanency of ObamaCare and the end of Reaganism.
Krauthammer goes on to pronounce the Financial Regulatory bill as a now permanent fixture that is unrepealable. Again, the "brilliant" Krauthammer ignores not only the constitutional problems with such a bill, but the political ones associated with them. For example, among other things, the Bill purports to delegate the authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to bail out any financial institutions at his discretion without the necessity to go back to Congress to appropriate the funds. This is a blatant unconstitutional delegation of Article I legislative authority to the Executive, which is certain to be challenged and likely to be stricken by the Courts. As the quid pro quo for the massive regulation of the financial industry will imperil not just the constitutionality of the rest of the bill but its political viability as well, that is: Since the financial industry will not be able to access bailout funds (the carrot) without going back to Congress, it will oppose the regulatory burdens (the stick) that go along with it. The Regulatory Bill thus has both constitutional and political infirmities which threaten its long term viability. It should be easy to repeal in 2013.
Finally, Krauthammer sees the $1 trillion dollar stimulus as a "structural alteration of the U.S. Budget", whatever that means. Congress can decline to appropriate the funds, and a new GOP President can impound (that is, refuse to spend) whatever cannot be repealed outright.
Krauthammer really demonstrates his ignorance (and his Mondale/Obama domestic ideology) with the following sentence:
"Just as President Ronald Reagan cut taxes to starve the federal government and prevent massive growth in spending, Obama's wild spending -- and quarantining health-care costs from providing possible relief -- will necessitate huge tax increases."
Wrong, Charles. Reagan's tax cuts INCREASED revenue to the federal government. A lot. The problem was not a paucity of revenue in the federal treasury but a Congress too willing and eager to spend it all, and then some. I am surprised you don't know such basic economics. But, then you did work for Walter Mondale who as the Gipper once observed "never met a tax he didn't like... or hike." I am not surprised that, as a devotee of "Coach Tax Hike" which is what we Reaganites (the real kind...not the ersatz, freshly minted versions) used to call your old boss, your first recourse has been, and will always be, tax increases.
The solution is not a tax increase. It is tax cuts, massive, permanent tax cuts. It is not a return to pre-Obama Care. It is a massive pushback of government involvement in the healthcare market. This involves a further privatization of the health care system, especially minimization and eventual elimination of government distortions in the marketplace which drive up health care costs, chiefly the third party payer problem. And it is massive spending cuts and defunding of all Obama's handiwork. It wasn't tax hikes in 1980. It is not tax hikes in 2012. Sorry, Charlie.
In a word, Krauthammer's gloomy column should demoralize no one. Amazingly, he sees the massive GOP gains in the House and the Senate as a silver lining for Obama that will help him in much the same way the GOP takeover in 1994 helped Clinton. The problem with that analogy is that Clinton's overreach with HillaryCare and overspending failed in 1993-4, so the economy recovered enough for him to win. Clinton did not win BECAUSE of the GOP Congress. He was aided by the worst GOP candidate in a long line of bad ones, the ancient Bob Dole and further aided by the Perot candidacy which siphoned off 10% of the vote. Obama will have to face Sarah Palin, the lady whom Krauthammer told to "leave the room" for "debasing" the health care debate. 2012 will not be analogous to 1996, but much closer to 1980. If Sarah Palin looks like Bob Dole to you, Charles, you really need to have your contacts cleaned.
Krauthammer closes his column with another obtuse and insulting comparison of Obama to Reagan:
"Obama is down, but it's very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he's done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do he knows must await his next 500 days -- those that come after reelection.
The real prize is 2012. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril."
Krauthammer, a statist at heart, sees Obama's "accomplishments" as a political positive, even though they are toxic and wildly unpopular: "He got something done", even though it is the consensus of the American people that what he did was bad for the country and all its citizens. Reagan too accomplished things in his first term, notably the tax cuts of 1981 which were very popular and which had reinvigorated the severely ailing economy, which Reagan inherited, by late 1983.
Don't underestimate Obama. (Seriously, is this possible?) And don't overestimate Krauthammer. He was wrong about the death panels, wrong about Reagan, wrong about tax cuts, wrong about Palin and he is dead wrong about Obama. With a record like that, maybe he is the one who should leave the room.
Except Charles didn’t vote for Obama. He reluctantly voted McLame.
Hi cornelis! Good to see you. Interesting that our best and strongest stalwarts taking on Obama and fighting the good fight are the plain spoken Sarah Palin and soft spoken, Southern Jim DeMint, IMO, of course.
“you are just about entirely mistaken.”
In what ways was he mistaken?
OK, so one more freeper has figured out that Kraut is happily a Euro-Socialist.
Did it take that much?
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“I don’t think he did vote for Obama but he was less than enthusiastic about McCain”
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His constant ebulliant praise for O, both before and after the election, tells me that he did vote for him.
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I like the analysis.
Not mentioned—and not relevant, either, to the discussion—is the fact that Krauthammer is anti-gun. And I’ve always been suspicious of those who would deny “The People” the right to self-defense and other uses of firearms. If they feel that way toward the masses, their other views are suspect, too.
“The irony is that functioning ObamaCARE would have ended
Krauthammer’s career - if not his life.”
How’s that?
Check back in when you’re sober.
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Wow, you should submit this to Conservatives4Palin. It’s very good. Really!
Grand idea! Sarah will see it!
Bever mind the one word “critics” here. They’re the idiots...lol.
Um, I mean NEVER mind...lol.
That “B” for “N” gets me all too often.
“Idiot”
Let’s see. A fawning George Bush Drone like you calls me an idiot. With your posting history I could qualify you as an expert in idiocy in any Court in the country. I am not surprised you are uncritical acolyte of Krauthammer. He wormed his way into the GOP tent under Bush.
I am reading Rendezvous With Destiny right now. It is the history of the 1980 election and it fills me with regret that Reagan chose the first Bush. (He wanted to, and should have, picked Paul Laxalt, a real conservative) The Bushes have been with a few discrete policy exceptions (Alito, Roberts and Thomas are the only ones I can think of) unshirted disasters for the GOP and antecedents for Clinton and Obama.
Reagan only campaigned in one contested GOP primary. Care to guess where and when? It was in 1978 in Texas that the Gipper campaigned AGAINST your hero George W. Bush, who was defeated. Too bad that wasn’t the last we heard of him.
Jack, I believe you have understood CK better than Brice. He is not saying that Obama has passed great legislation, my opinion is that CK does not like the laws Obama has passed. CK is grudgingly admitting that Obama has accomplished a lot of his agenda, that it will be difficult even with republicans holding part of the Congress to undo his legislation while he is in office, and that after living with these new laws for two years it will be hard to repeal them if Obama is knocked out in 2012 but it is not clear that Obama will be knocked out then. So he (CK) is not wrong about this and he is not saying that he likes the situation, far from it—he is warning us that we have a lot of work to do if we are going to undo any of the laws Obama has signed so far. (And I would submit that the lame duck Congress after the election may also pass unpopular legislation that will be difficult to undo.)
There have been times when I thought CK was wrong or simply wrong-headed in some of his analysis but the majority of his columns and comments on the talk shows have a validity that many other commentators miss. I do think he knows this and has a certain amount of hubris that also comes across in some of his comments. This may be where you have decided he is an elitist. I don’t believe that one implies the other although they often sit together on the bus.
“The fact that he appraises Obama as “highly intelligent” makes me question either his honesty or his perceptiveness”
I think it’s reasonable to assume Krauthammer is an outright liar.
Great post. Thanks for pointing out Krauthammer’s deliberate agenda to demoralize conservatives.
“Jack, I believe you have understood CK better than Brice. He is not saying that Obama has passed great legislation, my opinion is that CK does not like the laws Obama has passed.”
I am not saying Krauthammer believes this is great legislation. However, much of it is legislation that both he and his bosses Carter and Mondale supported back in the 1980s when he was trying his best to defeat Reagan. So you can color me skeptical about his sincerity. And the Kraut offers no prescriptions about how to resist/repeal/attack the atrocious schemes. He pronounces them settled and irrevocable. Whether Krauthammer intends it or not, his piece—if taken seriously—offers no hope for overturning Obama’s handiwork, and it could have the effect of DEMORALIZING GOP turnout in 2010.
He says as much:
“For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign.”
If you follow his logic, Democratic retention of the House and Senate in 2010 would make it TOUGHER for Obama in 2012. So if you want to strike a blow at Obama, according to Krauthammer’s analysis, either vote Democrat in 2010 or don’t vote at all. Having a GOP Congress is, in effect, a political liability for 2012.
This is preposterous spin based upon 1996, a totally different election cycle, with different candidates and has no relationship to the present.
“I think it’s reasonable to assume Krauthammer is an outright liar.”
Thanks for the kind comment. I find myself much more in line with that assumption than I do with any of the ones that the Kraut puts forth.
The most important lesson here is that we should dismiss Krauthammer.
Be careful not to miss the opportunity to examine Krauthammer’s agenda.
Krauthammer might parrot conservative principles here and there, but the thrust of his commentary is always in line with an agenda to dull and even neutralize the cutting edge of conservatism.
Regardless of whether Krauthammer himself knows what he’s really up to, this agenda is foremost in the agenda of the cultural marxists.
“Krauthammer might parrot conservative principles here and there, but the thrust of his commentary is always in line with an agenda to dull and even neutralize the cutting edge of conservatism.”
Well stated, RiF. Krauthammer is intelligent and very subtle. His messages will be either planted axioms (Government programs once enacted are NEVER repealed or struck down) or the 2010 vote is meaningless and in fact a GOP victory actually may assist Obama in 2012. His messages are designed not to advance constitutional conservatism and actually tend more to defeat it.
I point this out in post 95 above. Krauthammer is not to be trusted.
I suggest everyone here tune in at about 5:45 Central to Brett Bair (sp?) on fox every night to listen to Krauthammer rip Obama on a regular basis. When Krauthammer says that Obama has been successful, he clearly means that he has been successful as OBAMA/progressives would define success. This is typically patently clear when in the very next sentence he goes on to state how such “success” will be detrimental to U.S. interests and/or will ultimately result in failure.
IMO, Krauthammer in one of the very best we have at expressing in meticulous, analytical, and logical detail how and why Obama and progressives are attempting to destroy this country.
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