Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume Monday panned the highly partisan tone of President Barack Obama’s speech on the economy.
The president’s remarks, in which he attacked Republicans for their push to defund his controversial 2009 health care reform law, weren’t widely seen since the cable news networks had opted to continue with coverage of the shooting tragedy at the Washington Navy Yard.
That was a good thing, Hume argued. He noted that Obama was more prone to go into attack mode than any other president in recent memory.
“Bret [Baier], I think a lot more people saw the criticism of Republicans just now on your program than saw it live,” Hume said. “Three cable networks, straight news cable networks as opposed to business networks had all dumped out. He was talking to C-Span and people online. And so not that many people heard it, which I think is probably good for him. I think this president tends to engage in partisan attacks from the platform at the White House more than any other president that I can remember. Usually what a president does — it’s vague, ‘Those who this’ or ‘some who say’ and all that. He is just talking about the party and he attacks the Republican Party with regularity.”
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As for the politics of Obama’s remarks, Hume theorized that the president welcomes a fight over a government shutdown because he sees it as a winner.
“I don’t think it’s particularly attractive but I do think this: He wants this fight,” Hume continued. “He wants this fight, and he wants shutdown in the middle of it and he will talk about it and attribute to talking about it to everybody else. Republicans are talking about ‘we want to keep the government open but shut down Obamacare.’ They are not saying they want to shut the government down, those who are. He wants this fight because he think it’s a loser for Republicans and on that count, I think he’s right.”