In his appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Tuesday, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said President Barack Obama is deliberately using major policy decisions to emasculate the Republican Party, which Krauthammer admitted is facing significant but hardly unprecedented political headwinds.
“Well, he’s has been doing that ever since Election Day,” Krauthammer said. “I wrote a column the first week of December pointing out entire strategy for the fiscal cliff was to split the Republicans. His offers had nothing to do with solving the fiscal issue or solving the debt. He showed no interest in reducing the debt since he was elected in 2008. He appoints a commission. Two years later, he ignores it. … He wants the entitlement state. …”
“But his strategy with fiscal cliff — as is his strategy with the debt ceiling — is to split, fracture and therefore neuter Republicans in the House, because that is all that stands between him and total dominance of Washington in his second term,” Krauthammer continued.
Host Bill O’Reilly said Republicans will have particular difficulty overcoming changing national demographics and a generally hostile political landscape in 2013, but Krauthammer countered that the challenges facing the GOP are nothing new.
“When you look where the Democrats were in 2000, when they lost, they had no leadership. Who was going to lead the party after the Gore defeat? In 2004, who was leader of the party? Nobody even heard of Barack Obama. … Every time a party loses, you get a book coming out saying [there is a] permanent Republican majority, [or a] permanent liberal majority. Nothing in the country is permanent.”