On Wednesday’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer suggested that Tuesday’s fiscal cliff deal, which appeared by many accounts to have been a political victory for President Barack Obama, is a step towards making America a Scandinavian-style welfare state.
“[T]his is a man that is so ideological,” Krauthammer said. “He is so committed, since the days as a community organizer, to undoing the injustices he sees in the country — what he calls social justice. He sees Europe [and] Scandinavia as a far more good and just society than ours. They have very high taxes and very strong sort of blanket entitlements, cradle to grave. That’s the ideal to which he wants to move the United States.”
Later in the segment, Krauthammer explained that Obama wants to divide House Republicans.
“I wrote a month ago that his objective in demanding a hike in tax rates was entirely political, because the [House] speaker offered him the same amount of money by eliminating loopholes,” Krauthammer said. “So, if he wanted the money, that’s all he wanted was to raise revenues, it was handed to him. But he said no, you have to raise rates. Why? Because he knew that would accentuate the fractures, the fissures in the Republican Party. It would neutralize the one oppositionist institution — the House of Representatives. That’s exactly what happened. He succeeded in that. The House has been neutered. You saw what happened last night. And if he gets the House out of the way, he can then be dominant in Washington for his entire second term.”