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Krauthammer: Romney Simply Doesn’t Have Capacity To Explain Conservative Ideas

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Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer sat down with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and opined that Newt Gingrich won last night’s debate — in fact, he “won big.” Krauthammer criticized Mitt Romney‘s mediocre debate performance and was incredulous at how the former Massachusetts Governor wasn’t prepared for a question on his tax returns. “How could he not have prepared a nice short succinct humane answer about what he did at Bain?” Krauthammer perplexedly exclaimed. “He didn’t really have that — he kind of stumbled around.”

RELATED: Rick Perry Challenges Romney: ‘Mitt, We Need For You To Release Your Income Tax’

O’Reilly wondered why Romney was apprehensive to explain his capital gains tax policies. “I don’t know what they are afraid of, I think they are intimidated by the press,” O’Reilly observed quizzically. “I really think the press intimidates Romney and some of the others.”

“I don’t know if it’s the press,” Krauthammer replied. “But he simply doesn’t have the capacity to explain with some color and sort of force conservative ideas. He is a businessman. he, you know, he looks like he is chairing a meeting of the board….Why didn’t he say in the debate last night: Look, when the Democrats, the ones who supposedly are the ones who are the champion of the Middle Class or Working Class took control of GM and Chrysler, hundreds, thousands of people lost their jobs, dealerships were shut down, the Pontiac and other lines were shut down. You have to do it to save the company to enable it to survive and then to grow it as it is now beginning to grow and restore the jobs.”

“If he had just explained that and took the playbook out of what the Democrats have done, he would have had a forceful answer, but for some reason he simply deflected it.”

Watch Krauthammer critique Romney’s debate performance below via Fox News:

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  • WiddleBabyDanielson

    Look, when the Democrats, the ones who supposedly are the ones who are
    the champion of the Middle Class or Working Class took control of GM and
    Chrysler, hundreds, thousands of people lost their jobs, dealerships
    were shut down, the Pontiac and other lines were shut down. You have to
    do it to save the company to enable it to survive and then to grow it as
    it is now beginning to grow and restore the jobs.”

    Well as soon as we load them up with debt and walk away with a ton of cash, the I will agree with his analogy.

  • Anonymous

    Let me be the first to call those conservative ideas RINOs.

  • Anonymous

    This is such a crock.
    Mitt has said those very things, over and over and over again.
    He made that very point last week on the auto bailouts and Limbaugh gave him grief for 2 days.
    Isn’t it funny how these blowhards want to dictate to Mitt how he should express himself?
    And Krauthammer of all people lecturing anyone about  being more articulate…..What a joke.
    You’re doing just fine Mitt, the Nattering Naybobs can stuff it!

  • Anonymous

    “Romney Simply Doesn’t Have Capacity To Explain Conservative Ideas”

    Agreed. Not so sure Krauthammer does, either.

  • Anonymous

    Oooh, this could leave a mark!

    McCain’s opposition research book on Romney is released!

    http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/01/mccain-opposition-research-book-on-romney-published/

  • Henry Wood

    Conservatives are all about incoherent rage.  I don’t think “ideas” matter to them either way.

  • Pablo

    Instead, we loaded them up with taxpayer debt and let the unions walk away with them. 

  • Hout Bosques

    This is going to be fun for the whole family.

    Example – from page 135:

    “Bain Capital financed 1988 buyout with junk bonds issued by Drexel Burnham – when SEC filed chargesagainst the firm and CEO Michael Milken, Bain Capital maintained their business relationship; Romney laterreminisced about “the glorious days of Drexel Burnham.”

    This is like the SECOND THING I looked at in the Business Record summary – & the other one was just as good, as it catches Romney is a Big Lie. 

    Time for a hot cup of cocoa & a nice winter’s night read …

  • Anonymous

    It used to.

    William F. Buckley (now a RINO, no doubt) is rolling in his grave.

  • http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

    Great looking out.

  • Hout Bosques

    Seriously – this thing is gold for the Dems. Romney made business deals with Iran! Bain got hit with a $100m fine for Medicare fraud when Romney was running Bain! Romney shipped Maytag jobs to China! 

    On and on and on. 

  • Pablo

    You think they haven’t already put their own book together?

  • Anonymous

    It’s liberals to whom ideas are strangers. Liberals can only speak in slogans, the shorter the better. They don’t think at all, but go thru life feeling and emoting and tearing down anything they don’t understand, which is pert near everything.Not only are liberals not cerebral; the act of thinking is alien to them, and the act of speaking intelligently is likewise so alien that their leader needs a teleprompter just to talk to kindergarteners.

    Odd how liberals accuse conservatives of “incoherent rage” when it’s
    liberals, not conservatives, who sh*t in public, regularly use filthy
    language in public, trash the public spaces, disrupt speakers they don’t
    like and in countless other ways show that they not only can’t argue,
    but are so incoherent that they have to resort to vile behavior to
    express themselves at all. Critters of the quantum, bubbling over
    eternally with ravening, ferocious anger — that’s liberals.

  • Henry Wood

    William B. Fuckley was always more snide and condescending than intelligent.

  • Henry Wood

    “Liberals can only speak in slogans, the shorter the better.”

    You mean like when we were saying “Drill Baby Drill!”

    Nice job expressing your rage, btw.  Let it all out.

  • 12voltman1
  • 12voltman1

    No Doubt!

  • Hout Bosques

    You mean it gets BETTER????? 

    Oh man: Turkey Day comes early this year.

  • Anonymous

    So Charlie is going to vote for Obama?

  • Anonymous

    Funny, you just described Newt to a T.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bart-Morgay/100001554351938 Bart Morgay

    The far-right nutjobs like Krauthammer and Limbaugh have never liked Romney and are always looking to put a knife in his back. But Romney is screwed if he loses Fox News.

  • 12voltman1

    Who else does “Faux News” have?
     They are stuck with Willard!

  • Anonymous

    Ive been reading your comments lately and I get the sense that you are not overly enthusiastic about Romney winning. I think you see the future and its another 4 years of Obama. You have been subdued as of late:)

  • Pablo

    I am not the least bit enthused about Romney, and I see Obama losing regardless.

  • Pablo

    No, “Yes we can!” or “Hope and Change!”

    “Drill, Baby, Drill” is an actual policy.

  • http://twitter.com/mattparkerfl Matt Parker

    The big problem facing Mitt Romney is that he is simply not trusted by the right-wing base of the Republican Party. Mitt is a flip-flopp­er, and he has never stopped flopping from the day he entered the political universe. More importantl­y, he does not engage in the kind of overheated hateful rhetoric against President Obama that the Tea Party adores and has made it a litmus test for any presidenti­al candidate. Mitt doesn’t play the kind of dog whistle politics the conservati­ves are demanding. He’s a “progressi­ve”! And then there’s “Romneycar­e.”  www.sunstateactivist.org

  • Anonymous

    A bad one, to be sure, but that certainly never stopped today’s new strain of conservatives.

  • Anonymous

    How is that going to be possible? If Romney cant get the base enthused how will he get anyone enthused? If you put him next to Data on star trek Data would have more personality.

  • Anonymous

    Poor Pablo. Must be missing the intellectual heft of Herb “Uzbekibekibekistanstan” Cain.

    At least you still have the pure genius of Perry.

  • Pablo

    Are you aware that “Faux News” is going to continue making a shitload of money, which is what it is built to do, regardless?

  • http://twitter.com/TheMorningSpew The Morning Spew
  • Henry Wood

    “Drill Baby Drill” is not, in fact, a policy.  It’s a slogan.

    If it were a policy, it would be:  “Hand our mineral resources over to multinational petrochemical companies with a history of polluting entire ecosystems, so that they can sell our own resources back to us at the same price that Hugo Chavez would charge.”

  • Anonymous

    What?  No comment from Jim Treacher?  Did traffic pickup at the Daily Caller?  Are there now a dozen people commenting on his postings?

  • Hout Bosques

    I believe voltman was referring to Fuppet News being stuck with a crappy champion with a crappy narrative, not to any effect on the load of cash it can expect to excrete. There really isn’t any serious expectation that FNC going down with the SS Mittens is going to affect the loyalty the old white retired/underemployed bigot demo holds for FNC. Look at last night’s live crowd in the GOP debate: a bigger collection of old white loud proud bigots in one room that isn’t the RNC is hard to imagine – but they’re still losers.  

    This is one of the things that frustrates Murdoch about America: in England & also in Aus (until this most recent election, anyway), he’s always been able to play one major party off on another in fawning all over his media coverage, & as a result has operated very much in the fashion of Citizen Kane in those countries. But in the U.S., his access to government is very much limited, in being a function of whether or not one party succeeds in gaining power. That monkey the Fuppet News demo has on its back for hearing the authoritarian world view on a daily & hourly basis makes it the opium den or crack house of American political pandering, & makes NewsCorp a lot of money – but it really cramps the larger Murdoch style of being able to choose which side to treat like crap & thereby to choose winners & losers. And it’s fine for now, as long as the FNC demo stays alve – but within this second decade of this century, they’re going to have largely died out – along with Roger Ailes, & indeed Murdoch himself. 

  • Anonymous

    Why would Obama waste his time with Newt?

  • Hout Bosques

    Give him some credit: he’s lying his face off about Obama as fast & as furiously as he can.

  • Hout Bosques

    Afraid? The fat old reprobate is an irrelevancy in his own party.

  • Pablo

    It’s possible because Obama is an unmitigated failure and an old boot could beat him.

  • Pablo

    “The energy that runs America is bad!” is also a policy. And how’s that working out?

  • Pablo

    tl;dr.

  • http://mediamatters.org/ Leedog

    Come on people!! Everyone knows that Romney is a Liberal pretending to be a Conservative just to get elected… I guess everyone knows that except Republicans!! Lol!!

  • 12voltman1

    All news media is all about the ratings and stories to exaggerate!

  • Henry Wood

    Dearest Pablo,

    Let’s see how Solar does when we give those companies the same amount of money in subsidies and tax breaks that we have given the petrochemical companies for the last 60 years or so.

  • 12voltman1

    I do like Rick Santorum’s analogy (Paraphrasing)” Mitt has run for office as a Liberal then as a Moderate and now as as a Conservative.”

  • http://gregingleright.weebly.com/ Greg

    Two paragraphs qualify as tl?

  • Чёрт Возьми

    Gingrich is really fooling people. All of his ideas are borrowed from the liberals of decades ago, and he is pawning them off as conservatism today. His solution to every problem is a government action/involvement, but he still manages to make it sound like it is not. And, let’s not forget Gingrich’s “liberal” attitude toward marriage (for himself).

  • Чёрт Возьми

    That was not a debate. It was Newt taking advantage of the fact that the reporter is not allowed to rebut.

  • 12voltman1

    Wanna bet?

  • Чёрт Возьми

    Pot
    Kettle

  • https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmS1H0GlNDiHCXlUQxKLF8-_OhSQfgcNpg Orktane

    He

  • Чёрт Возьми

    Replying to Pablo. (Accidentally gave him a like when trying to reply.

    Talk about empty criticisms! 
    “Obama is an unmitigated failure and an old boot could beat him.”
    That is as just the kind of blathering that proved Palin, Bachmann, and Cain had nothing to offer except empty criticism.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1190134026 Barry Dalton

    Чёрт Возьми:

    sssshhhh

    Pablo and his ilk think this kind of talk is a winning strategy…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1190134026 Barry Dalton

    There is still plenty of time to program Romney with the correct answers.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1190134026 Barry Dalton

    You are the first rah-rah Mitt Romney guy I’ve heard of.
    I admire your moxie.

    I agree. There is still plenty of time to program Romney with the correct answers.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_45S32GWGDRUJIL6E2U4HOZW4BM Bob

    I find it interesting that, just as he appeared to be locking this up, Mitt starts losing guys like Chuck. That, combined with Newt’s strong showing in Tuesday’s debate, could derail his hopes for a quick nomination battle.

  • Anonymous

    Pablo’s guy was Herman Cain. Hahahahahahahaha….! he’s not exactly the greatest judge of character or ability!

  • Anonymous

    Red states:

    U.S. states with highest rates of teen pregnancy (top 5, all conservative) (Guttmacher Inst.)
    1. Nevada 2. Arizona3. Mississippi4. New Mexico 5. Texas

    U.S. states with highest rates of crime (top 5, all conservative ) (CQ Press)
    1: NEVADA

    2: NEW MEXICO

    3: LOUISIANA

    4: SOUTH CAROLINA

    5: TENNESSEE

    U.S. states with the lowest per capita income (bottom 10, all conservative )
    41. Alabama  42. South Dakota 
    43.New Mexico 
    44. Kentucky 
    45. South Carolina 
    46. Arkansas 
    47. West Virginia 
    48. Utah 
    49. Idaho 
    50. Mississippi 

  • Hout Bosques

    Krauthammer is right on his observation about Willard Mittens Rmoney Pate de Fois Gras Grey Poupon Thurston Howell III, but the main reason for that being so is that said WMRPdFGGPTHIII is just not a very convincing liar (that is, he lies like a bandit, but he just can’t be bothered believing much of what he lies about):

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/what-mitt-romney-learned-from-his-dad-20120117 

    maybe because Billold & Kraut & Limbaugh & the other GOP nominee contestants (except for RoPaul, who’s more than a bit nuts on things like Von Mises Austrian “economics”, how money works, the meaning of debt, the Rule of Law, etc.) are all more dependent on being more convincing liars than he is.  

    But leave aside Mitten’s lies: what he reveals as stuff he actually believes in – his sense of entitlement, his lack of empathy with anyone who doesn’t have a quarter billion or more in wealth, his conviction that telling lies is forgiven as being in some unidentified good cause (no doubt the cause of him being elected president), those are all sufficiently disqualifying characteristics.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1190134026 Barry Dalton

    Nicely done.

    Excellent point.

    Sorry if I steal this point without attribution on other threads.

    Rightwingers like Newt and Santorum are always implying that Liberal policies cause crime and every other social ill.

    They preach conservatism like it’s some sort of proven truism they received directly from the All Mighty.

    And yet the states they control tend to be the worst states, especially in education and per capita income.

    This is proof that Republican policies solve nothing.

  • Pablo

    Tell me about the petrochemical subsidies, Hout!

  • Pablo

    It does when they’re Hout’s.

  • Pablo

    You’ve got a crush on him, don’t you? That’s so cute.

  • Anonymous

    Here’s another interesting factual nugget:

    Over his 8 years in office, George W. Bush presided over an 85.5% increase in the Gross Federal Debt. When he was inaugurated on 1/20/2001 the Gross Federal Debt was $5.728T, or 57% of the $10.129T GDP.

    On 1/20/09, the day of Bush’s departure, the Gross Federal Debt was estimated at $10.627T, an 85.5% increase since his inauguration. This debt was 73% of a projected GDP of $14.561T, reaching a peak not seen since 1955, when the US was winding down the WWII debt.

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