Krauthammer: Obama using SOTU speech to 'crush Republicans'
Columnist previews State of the Union
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 12, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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O'REILLY: The State of the Union in less than an half hour away. And I just got this bullets in here apparently some of the authorities watching The Factor tonight. Nobody has emerged according to the Associated Press. Nobody has emerged from that burning cabin. All right, so that means the guy is dead, right? That's what we would assume.
All right, now, today, former Vice President Dick Cheney took a major shot at President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DICK CHENEY, 46TH VICE PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: If you look at what the President's motives are for picking Chuck Hagel, I think he wants a republican to go be the foil, if you will, for what he wants to do to the Defense Department, which is, I think, do serious, serious damage to our military capabilities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Wow. Joining us now from Washington, Charles Krauthammer. So, in the context of the State of the Union where the President is going to announce how many troops he's going to withdraw this year from Afghanistan, it's going to be a substantial number.
Cheney is basically -- and you know, the former Vice President knows very well it's the State of the Union day, he's basically saying, he's trying to hurt the military, trying to degrade it. And you say.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Look, it's always very difficult to know the motives of any actor. And I have slightly different view, and that is, what is Obama at course, a community organizer.
He's a man who believes in leveling between the classes. He's a man who wants to go against inequality, --
-- to reduce inequality and to bring what the left -- he's a man of the left, will call social justice. What's the biggest model of that in the world? Western Europe.
He's a European social democrat. Sweden, France, Britain. Those are examples. And they are the entitlement state. What's his major achievement in the first term? ObamaCare and nationalizing healthcare the way they have it in Europe.
And until Obama, we didn't have it here. And how do you get the money to subsidize an entitlement state? In two ways, and Europeans have shown us, --
-- raised taxes, which we are going to hear in the State of the Union. Obama is very intent on raising the taxes relentlessly.
And reducing defense spending. After the Second World War, the European countries slashed defense spending to the point where the French can't even airlift troops into Mali, a few hundred miles away.
And that's how they were able to fund the entitlement state. Obama, I do not think, wants to destroy the military. But his main objectives, the reason he is president and what he wants to achieve and to leave as a legacy --
-- is to create a more, as he would say, socially-just entitlement state like Europe. And that's why he doesn't really care about the cuts in the Pentagon because that's where you get the money.
And he wants to raise taxes because that's the other source of getting the money. So, that's how I understand what he wants to do with the Pentagon.
O'REILLY: All right. Now, let me ask you some ridiculous questions, OK. And you're used to that from me, right.
KRAUTHAMMER: That's why I'm here, to straighten you out.
O'REILLY: OK. Number one, why didn't he just say that, what you just said. Why doesn't President Obama just say it. Because he'd have to run for office again, why doesn't he just say it.
KRAUTHAMMER: Look, I don't think that saying, "I'm a European social democrat" is an appealing argument.
O'REILLY: Right. He doesn't have to say it quite that way but he could say, "I want to spend less on the Pentagon and more on social justice." Why doesn't he just say that.
KRAUTHAMMER: He has already said that in the Inaugural Address. He said, "We have to nation-build at home." What does that mean.
It is clear as a bell. We don't want to spend our money in wars. We want to spend our money at home. We don't want to spend it on cruisers. We want to spend it on entitlements.
O'REILLY: Just say it. Just say it. He won't say it.
KRAUTHAMMER: He says it in every which way. He's been saying it ever since he was inaugurated in 2009.
O'REILLY: He doesn't say the words. You read the words that way. But I'll bet you, if he were here, he would deny it all day long.
"Oh, I don't want to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to modernize. I'm just going to do this. I'm going to do this."
He's never going to say, "I'm going to take the money from the military and give it to people because, I think, that's the social, just way to go about it." He's never going to say that.
KRAUTHAMMER: He is a politician who understands that if you're going to win the argument, crush the republicans, get this done in Congress, you have to speak the language of the people.
So what does he say? He doesn't say, "I'm a Swede."
(LAUGHTER)
He says, "What I want to do is to have a very lean military. We don't want these wars abroad. We don't want to be the hedge among the dominant power. What we want is to be very wise --"
O'REILLY: But he doesn't say that. He doesn't say, "We don't want to be the dominant power," Charles. He never said that.
KRAUTHAMMER: He goes around the world apologizing --
O'REILLY: I know what he does. He just doesn't say it. All right, I got it. Now, --
KRAUTHAMMER: But you're --
O'REILLY: Look, I'm just trying to point out that I'm getting tired of the dance. You know what I mean? I'm getting tired of the dance. And you said --
KRAUTHAMMER: But it's won two elections in a row, his dance. He has fractured the republicans.
O'REILLY: Yes, but he doesn't have to dance anymore. Just say it now.
KRAUTHAMMER: He managed -- with the dance, he fractured the republicans. He won on the fiscal cliff. And, now, he's going to want to win on sequesters.
And you know what the argument he's going to make on sequester is, the republicans are the ones who are defending the rich, all the tax breaks for the oil companies.
And they wanted to take the food out of mouths of babes, and take away healthcare from your mother.
O'REILLY: Well, that was my next question.
KRAUTHAMMER: That's his way of saying it.
O'REILLY: You read my mind here. You read my mind here. He's not going to say --
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, that's not going to save you from this show.
O'REILLY: He's not going to say it tonight, "I'm going to raise taxes." He never says that, all right.
On the rich, he did. But he is going to say, "We have to close the loopholes," all right, "on the private jets and oil companies, no more subsidies."
That's what he's going to do, which is, in effect, a tax raise, all right. So, you agree with me there. He's not going to climb and say, "I'm going to raise taxes again on these damn people. I don't like them and I want their money."
KRAUTHAMMER: But you are conceding that he dances. He won't say it straight. He'll talk about loopholes when he really wants to raise taxes. So, you agree with me.
O'REILLY: But that's a good way of raising taxes for Obama.
KRAUTHAMMER: That's exactly right. That's why he uses this other kind of language.
O'REILLY: Right.
KRAUTHAMMER: He wins with that.
O'REILLY: Yes. And that's what he does all day long. All right, the final question is, the State of the Union is just propaganda to me.
I've been doing this 35 years. I don't think I've ever heard a pithy statement from any president. He'd say, "Oh, we're doing great. We're doing great and whatever I do is going to help you."
Every president, every one. Am I wrong.
KRAUTHAMMER: Look, the reason he's giving this speech is not so that he lodges a pithy statement in the memory of the nation and it gets engraved on his tombstone.
He's giving this speech to crush the republicans whom he already has on-the-run because he knows that the only thing standing between him and this left agenda that he wants to enact, which was stopped in the last two years, is to neutralize, to marginalize Republican House.
And if he does that -- he started that with the fiscal cliff, he split them and he neutralized them, if he does it with the sequester and these other arguments, he then has the high road, unopposed to controlling Washington and to change the country the way he said he would and the way he started in years one and two.
O'REILLY: All right, Charles Krauthammer, everyone. Thanks very much. We appreciate it.
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