Charles Krauthammer's Midterm Predictions

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," October 26, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Back of the Book" segment tonight: A lot can happen in seven days, but the consensus is the Democrats will take a pounding in the election next Tuesday.

Joining us from Washington with his thoughts on the matter, Fox News political analyst Charles Krauthammer. As we stated earlier, there is anger on both sides. Anger on the conservative side. They don't like the way the country is being run. Anger on the left and the far left that things aren't going their way. So this is an election driven by anger. When you have that in the air, it's a motivator. So how do you think it's going to play out?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I'm not sure I agree with the premise. The Gallup poll asks people to use an adjective to describe how they feel. Anger came in at 12 percent. Concern, which is sort of a very reasonable response to where the nation is right now, was three times that.

You know, when the Republicans took over with the Gingrich election in the Clinton years, it was called the year of the angry, white male. I did a study of the time. There wasn't a scintilla of evidence in the polling about anger or white males. It was an invention of the mainstream media and the left, because anger is something that is sort of irrational. And if the Republicans win…

O'REILLY: You just hit on it though.

KRAUTHAMMER: If conservatives win, then it has to be a result of something irrational or out of control.

O'REILLY: Well, that's what I'm going to challenge you. I'm going to challenge you on this, doctor.

KRAUTHAMMER: Go ahead.

O'REILLY: When you see a poll and it says the word "concern" and then below it says "anger," most people are going to choose the word "concern" because anger is a pejorative. They don't want to apply a bad word to them. But I'll tell you what. I mean, we're seeing -- we saw that with Ms. Behar today attacking Sharron Angle. We see it on the Internet, off the chart. And, you know, you can say there is a very thin line between concern and anger, can you not?

KRAUTHAMMER: Bill, the Internet is a cauldron of anger everyday, every year, election year or not, with unemployment at 10 percent or at two percent. It isn't exactly a good index of what's happening.

I think what you're getting in the country is a very reasonable response to an overreaching Obama administration, together with a congressional leadership, that openly declared at the beginning of its taking over the White House and the Congress that it was going to change America, and it went ahead and it did it with Obamacare and stimulus. And the country is standing up and saying, part of it's angry, but it's generally a reasoned response saying, "No, we're not going here. That's not what we want."

This is a referendum going on right now after a two-year argument -- and I think a very important argument -- over the size, the scope, the reach of government, over the nature of the American experiment and social contract. Are we going to be individualistic, as we always have been, in the future? Or are we going to be a European-style social democracy? This is a very interesting debate. We're going to get an answer on November 2.

And I think anger is a peripheral -- it's a peripheral phenomenon here, and the left loves to harp on it as a way to explain away why it's going to get really badly beaten on Election Day.

O'REILLY: OK. But you can't deny, Charles, and you've convinced me with your eloquent argument.

KRAUTHAMMER: Thank you. I appreciate that.

O'REILLY: You can't deny that there is anger on the far left, that these people are furious that their guy, Barack Obama, is not doing well. You can't deny.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, I would say many on the left, the ideological left, thinks he didn't do enough. I think they are nuts. He gave them Obamacare, which is the single most important piece of social legislation in the last half century, and unless it's repealed, it will change our country irrevocably. We will end up like a Canada or a Britain. That, in and of itself, if the presidency were to end tomorrow, it would be historic. And anybody on the left who thinks he didn't do enough, I think is smoking the stuff that you and Stossel were talking about being legalized in California.

This is a very important liberal administration. And those on the left who don't think it has already succeeded, I think have no idea what's really happened over the last two years.

O'REILLY: All right, Charles, and your prediction? Big GOP...

KRAUTHAMMER: Fifty-five -- 55 in the House. Eight seats in the Senate.

O'REILLY: All right. Thank you.

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