Krauthammer’s Take on Romney, Palin, & Obama’s turning away from his own campaign rhetoric
From last night’s “All-Stars.”
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On prospective GOP candidates for 2012:
Romney really is the frontrunner. He has done himself well. He is a grown-up. He knows economics. He’s trusted on that.
There is also a tradition among Republicans of nominating the next in line, as we did with George Bush, Sr. in 1988, Dole in ‘96, and McCain in ‘08, sort of the last grown-up who was left over from the last campaign.
And I think that Romney has done well. Look, he is the guy who is as clean as clean can get. You are not going to wake up in the morning and discover he is crying in Argentina. This is a solid guy and he’s got a record.
Now, as to Palin, I agree entirely with what Mara said. She is—she has star power without any doubt. She has an extremely devoted following. But she is not a serious candidate for the presidency.
She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn’t. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won’t work.
It could work for eight weeks if you’re the number two candidate, as she was last year. But even so, she got singed a lot in that campaign. You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency.
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On Obama’s pattern of broken campaign promises:
If it’s a promise that becomes a goal, it’s on its way to becoming a betrayal. It certainly will happen on taxes. There is no doubt on that.
The way he reversed himself on a host of issues—on detention without trial, on rendition, on state secrets and on having lobbyists in his administration. But all that is penny ante stuff.
The real betrayal of this presidency, the premise of the campaign last year, which he talked about endlessly—and the audiences were swooning over this—was he was going to introduce a new politics. He was going to have a politics of the people.
He would take the lobbying and the lobbyists and the influence peddlers out of government, the money changers out of the temple. That is what he represented.
All that was rubbish last year, and now it’s all the more so. We have had, because of his ambitious government takeover—at least attempted—on stimulus, on health care, on cap and trade, which is the entire energy industry, with so much allocation of capital out of Washington, the frenzy of lobbying in Washington has been unprecedented.
It’s not business as usual as he promised. It’s worse. It’s the biggest frenzy of lobbying in American history.
It’s no accident that the oil and gas industries have 50 percent increases in lobbying expenses, and wind industry is on its way to a tripling of its expenses on lobbying. All this is as a result of his ambitions of regulating and controlling the economy…
——————————-
On prospective GOP candidates for 2012:
Romney really is the frontrunner. He has done himself well. He is a grown-up. He knows economics. He’s trusted on that.
There is also a tradition among Republicans of nominating the next in line, as we did with George Bush, Sr. in 1988, Dole in ‘96, and McCain in ‘08, sort of the last grown-up who was left over from the last campaign.
And I think that Romney has done well. Look, he is the guy who is as clean as clean can get. You are not going to wake up in the morning and discover he is crying in Argentina. This is a solid guy and he’s got a record.
Now, as to Palin, I agree entirely with what Mara said. She is—she has star power without any doubt. She has an extremely devoted following. But she is not a serious candidate for the presidency.
She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn’t. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won’t work.
It could work for eight weeks if you’re the number two candidate, as she was last year. But even so, she got singed a lot in that campaign. You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency.
————————
On Obama’s pattern of broken campaign promises:
If it’s a promise that becomes a goal, it’s on its way to becoming a betrayal. It certainly will happen on taxes. There is no doubt on that.
The way he reversed himself on a host of issues—on detention without trial, on rendition, on state secrets and on having lobbyists in his administration. But all that is penny ante stuff.
The real betrayal of this presidency, the premise of the campaign last year, which he talked about endlessly—and the audiences were swooning over this—was he was going to introduce a new politics. He was going to have a politics of the people.
He would take the lobbying and the lobbyists and the influence peddlers out of government, the money changers out of the temple. That is what he represented.
All that was rubbish last year, and now it’s all the more so. We have had, because of his ambitious government takeover—at least attempted—on stimulus, on health care, on cap and trade, which is the entire energy industry, with so much allocation of capital out of Washington, the frenzy of lobbying in Washington has been unprecedented.
It’s not business as usual as he promised. It’s worse. It’s the biggest frenzy of lobbying in American history.
It’s no accident that the oil and gas industries have 50 percent increases in lobbying expenses, and wind industry is on its way to a tripling of its expenses on lobbying. All this is as a result of his ambitions of regulating and controlling the economy…
