Krauthammer On Romney's "Poor" Answer: This is Bad, Romney Has No Fluency With Conservative Ideas

I've grown less confident in my own spin on it.

To many conservatives, this is simply the wrong answer for a Republican to give. It’s Democrats who rely on a social safety net, they argue. Republicans who believe in pro-growth conservative policies like to say their ideas will help everyone and don’t divide based on class, much less rely on government programs.

“This is bad,” conservative columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer said Wednesday night on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report.” “The real problem here is that he doesn’t have a fluency with conservative ideas. … The moral case for conservative economics is that our policies are going to help everybody, including the poor.”

This has actually been bothering me, though on a different issue.

Romney could do a great deal to win conservatives over to his side by giving a speech about Fast and Furious. There is no "extremism" in this. Three hundred people were murdered and our Department of Justice won't even say why.

One doesn't have to push the most pointed theory -- the Deliberate Murder theory -- to note that our own government should not be arming up the Mexican drug cartels.

I mean, is there a counter-argument I'm not aware of?

And yet Romney doesn't make easy lay-up gimme moves like this.

Which makes me think he doesn't even know much about Fast and Furious.

Why not?

If Romney's case for himself is competency -- is this not directly relevant for the case for the incompetency of the Obama Administration?

"Competency" seems to be Romney's comfort zone. It's not all icky-partisan.

Is he now ruling out competency arguments just because many on the right are making them, too? Is the well here poisoned simply because his fellow (allegedly) Republicans are drinking from it too?

Are we that vile, in his sight? That he cannot even go where we are, for the moment we're there ourselves, it becomes a club he wouldn't want to be a member of?

What the hell does he read? Who does he read? I assume the Wall Street Journal would be on his list; has he not read anything about it there, either?

Where is his head at -- literally? Where does his brain get its information from?

Is he so arrogant to imagine that he has nothing to learn from anyone else?

Does he despise conservatives so much that our very presence on a side of a topic sends him running for cover?

posted by Ace at 03:17 PM

| Access Comments