Politico’s Ben Smith just ran an interesting piece on conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. Smith describes Krauthammer as “a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president.” Here’s Krauthammer in an interview on Fox.
Another video and more after the jump.
Krauthammer says some pretty remarkable stuff here. First, I must say, he is much more convincing than most of the disorganized yelling coming out of the GOP lately. He skillfully breezes over a key Democrat point here. At 1:05 he implies that Democratic social change is not something democrats feel “government has to do.” What is remarkable about this is not that he disagrees with the Democratic agenda. But it is rather that he implies that the Democrats themselves see the increased capital gains tax as outside the function of government. Bold. Of course it’s far better than the latest Republican web video.
Here is a fascinating defense of George W. Bush that he gave during Bush’s waning presidency.
I actually have no major qualm with this. I present it as a relatively well-formed and seemingly genuine set of remarks. I would say that the term”the war” is somewhat confusing. Is Krauthammer referring to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or on Terror? Big differences there. But all in all, I think the public discourse is quite a bit higher with that level of rhetoric coming from the right. I leave you with this comment a YouTube user made about this video.
