George Stephanopoulos had a lively roundtable to host today on This Week, where the President’s “the private sector is doing fine” comment took center stage and, as one can expect, Ann Coulter and Mike Huckabee differed wildly from Ed Rendell and Van Jones on the meaning of the words. The conversation turned into a heated debate over whether the federal government should be investing in more firefighters and teachers, and whether the private sector could only grow at the expense of the public sector.

Advertising

RELATED: Ann Coulter On Red Eye: ‘Not A Good Image’ For Obama To Be Meeting With ‘Young Bimbos In Hollywood’

Huckabee started things off noting that he did not expect those comments to go away, “because the Republicans will make people remember,” and particularly “if the economy is still this bad in October,” which could very well be the case. Jones replied that Romney had his own set of economic gaffes, arguing he he was “glad the alarms are ringing in June, not November.” Coulter disagreed, defending Romney’s “

I like to be able to fire people who work for me” comment and attacking the President’s focus on public sector works. “The country is enraged at public sector workers and he’s talking about how we need to buck up the public school teachers,” she argued.

Stephanopoulos posited that he didn’t quite see the problem with hiring teachers and firefighters, and Huckabee argued that the problem wasn’t the hiring, but the way it was done. Coulter agreed, arguing over Rendell and Jones’ protests that the problem wasn’t with firemen, but that “it’s always firemen first and then we end up with 17 diversity coordinators at the public schools.” Huckabee agreed, adding he did not see how these hirings were a federal responsibility.

The segment via ABC below:
Tags: Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Ed Rendell, George Stephanopoulos, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, teachers, This Week, unions, Van Jones