Coordinated Effort to Marginalize Tea Party?
O'Reilly and Krauthammer debate far left's similar attacks on Tea Partiers
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," August 2, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Now for the top story tonight, reaction. Joining us from Washington, Fox News political analyst Charles Krauthammer, who himself has criticized the Tea Party but did not call them terrorists. Now, the coordinated anti-Tea Party effort is interesting here, Charles, is it not?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it certainly is a spitting and sputtering of people who are -- been deeply defeated. I mean, they were routed. Here they were up against a small minority of one House of one-third of the Congress and they got -- they lost everything. They got routed.
Look, this was their Agincourt. You know, Henry the fifth outnumbered by the French three to one. The opposition, the liberals, hold the Senate, they hold the White House, they hold the media, which had been leaking and parroting the White House line all the way through and they still got defeated. I think this is sort of a pathetic response. If you have no arguments, what do you do? Ad hominems. You attack, you throw names out. But I have one slight disagreement with you about it being a conspiracy. I don't think these people have the wherewithal to orchestrate a three-car motorcade.
O'REILLY: But here is what happened. Here is what…
KRAUTHAMMER: I think…
O'REILLY: Let me give you some information though.
KRAUTHAMMER: Hold on. The reason -- the reason for the repetition…
O'REILLY: Yes.
KRAUTHAMMER: …is lack of intelligence and lack of originality. These are people who are slothful.
O'REILLY: Here is what we are hearing, and it happens on the Republican side, too, by the way. But here is what we are hearing. There are a list of media people, pundits primarily, but some straight people as well, some so-called reporters, who are on mailing lists of radical-left websites. So they get blasts, they get talking points. And it happens on the right, too. OK, so every morning, they get a little ding on their BlackBerry, ding ding. And here is the phraseology that's being used. They read it and they spit it back. That's happening, Charles. That's coordination.
KRAUTHAMMER: Look, what it means to me is you've got people with no intelligence, no originality, no imagination. They are sputtering, they've lost, they have no arguments. What do they do? They want ad hominems, they want epithets. So somebody uses it on the air. Aha, well that's a good one, I'll use it. I don't credit them with the intelligence or the sort of -- what it takes to put together a conspiracy. I'm not sure that's an important point here. The effect is they all end up saying the same thing. It's birds on a wire.
O'REILLY: OK, but here is why I think it's important. When you repeat a lie often enough, in some people's minds it becomes a truth. That's the rule No. 1 of every propagandist who has ever operated. Repeat the lie. Mantra, mantra, mantra. Now, they tried it with the racist deal. You know they did. They tried to brand the Tea Party people racist. It didn't work. Now they are saying they're economic terrorists. They want to blow the country up.
KRAUTHAMMER: But as you just said, Bill, you just said earlier, if you repeat the lie often enough it will work. Well you just said with racism it didn't work.
O'REILLY: Because there was enough counter to that though.
KRAUTHAMMER: This is transparently silly. You actually had one congressman -- I wrote it down -- Mike Doyle in the meeting with the vice president yesterday actually said: We've negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists has made it impossible for us to spend any money.
Well, that's a hell of a definition of terrorism. Normally a terrorist says I want you to convert. I want your daughter, I want your money, I want your submission. This guy says a bunch of terrorists in Congress have stopped us from spending money we don't have. You think that's an argument that will carry with the American people? I think not.
O'REILLY: No and that's why I don't think it was the Tea Party who got this done. I think it was the American people. Now, I think the Tea Party drove the debate and set the debate up to their credit because I think most Americans understand we're wildly in debt and it's going to harm everybody. But I think it was the folks, Charles, that said, you know what? $14.5 trillion, not OK with us anymore. Unemployment at more than nine percent, not OK. I think that's what happened here. I'll give you the last word.
KRAUTHAMMER: But I'm not sure there is a big difference because in a democracy the folks speak. How do they speak on Election Day? What's the result? They elect representatives who speak on their behalf and those representatives in the House, some of them a rather small minority, prevailed over majority. Why? Because they have conviction and they have the argument and they have reality and truth on their side. This country is headed over a cliff economically. Everybody understands that, including the ratings agencies which are rather neutral on this. They're objective observers and they say you don't get your house in order, we're going to make you lose your AAA.
O'REILLY: Yes.
KRAUTHAMMER: Everybody understands that, but it was these people expressed through their representatives, who made the case and won the day.
O'REILLY: All right. Charles, thanks very much.
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