Ah, President Obama- Is there anything that the Foxiverse can’t blame on him? Apparently not, because it seems that even GOP infighting over the fiscal cliff is now his fault. That's what contributor Charles Krauthammer told us on the December 27th Hannity. Ever willing to find new ways to smear the president, Sean Hannity was more than willing to let him.
The segment began with Hannity placing all the fiscal-cliff blame on Obama, and attacking him for going on his holiday vacation in the first place, conveniently ignoring that Boehner also went on vacation, and even his Tea Party-loving public is upset that, unlike Obama, he won’t come back from his.
After a little indulging of his selective memory, Hannity called on Krauthammer, who said:
Well, I don’t begrudge him his holiday; I do begrudge what he’s done in these fiscal cliff talks. It’s been very clear from the beginning that he had no intention to solve the fiscal issues. He’s been using this, and I must say, with great skill and ruthless skill and success, to fracture, and basically shatter the Republican opposition. The only redoubt of the opposition is the house. His objective from the very beginning was to break the will of the Republicans in the House, and to create an internal civil war. And he’s done that.
How did he do it? By always insisting, from day one after the election, that Republicans had to raise rates? There’s no reason at all to get the revenue he needed, and that the Speaker was offering him, said that you have to raise rates. Obama himself, as you know said last July, July 2011, that you could get $1.2 trillion by eliminating loopholes, which is exactly what the Republicans offered him. So why did he insist on the rates? He said that is what he’ll insist upon, and that was the ultimatum. He did that because he knew it would create a crisis among the Republicans - and it did.
So, right up until now, Obama has what he wanted, which was a partisan political success. He’s been less worried about the fiscal issue for two reasons: Number one, he does not care about debt, he hasn’t in the four years. And Number two, he thinks he’s a political winner if we go over the cliff, he thinks he’s holding all the cards.
Um, do you have any evidence to back any of this up, Charles? The Republicans yanked plan B themselves, because there wasn't enough support for it.
Of course, Hannity didn’t care about a little thing like proof. Instead, his reply was, “This won’t be remembered as the Boehner era; it’ll be remembered as the Obama era. And if economists are right, and things economically don’t go right for the country… doesn’t the president have to worry about that legacy of his?”
Yeah… that’s some real classy commentating right there, Sean - offering a one-sided, pro-Republican account of the situation, then have the first words out of your guest's mouth blame President Obama for your side's problems... without any proof. Either come up with the facts to demonstrate that Obama somehow engineered all these discussions to create a civil war in the Republican party or man up and admit that the party's problems might be of their own making.
Tick, tick tick.