On Friday’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer went against the conventional wisdom of some in the conservative movement by arguing efforts to defund President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care legislation at the expense of shutting down the federal government was “really dumb.”
“Never issue a threat you’re not prepared to in the end honor and deliver on,” Krauthammer said. “And if the Republicans imagine they’re going to either stop the funding of the government or refuse the raising of the debt ceiling, they’re out of their minds. It would be a catastrophe in the end. All the president has to do is wait and they’re going to cave. This happened on January 1 of this year. It happened with the debt ceiling. We know the end game. Why would you threaten something and demand in return something you know the president will never do? It’s his signature legislation. It would be repudiation of his entire first term. The only alternative is to go over a cliff. It is really dumb.”
Host Bret Baier suggested that some Republican members of the House may feel compelled to go that direction because that’s what they were primarily elected to do. But Krauthammer dismissed that argument by saying now was not the time.
“You don’t engage in a tactic that you know from the beginning will lose, will injure the Republicans who have had a comeback since the January 1,” he added. “The only way to do it is to recover the Senate and do it with full control of the Congress, if ever, or the White House. You can’t govern from a single house of Congress.”