Juan Williams on Fox: Tea Party Congressmen are ‘Extremists’ Setting Up Obama’s Re-election
Since he was summarily dismissed from National Public Radio for appearing on Fox News, some might forget that Juan Williams is a liberal — but not if they were watching Fox News Sunday. Host Chris Wallace asked Williams about the House leaders losing track of how their freshmen would vote: “How embarrassing and that was what we saw John Boehner respond to at the beginning of the segment.” Williams insisted “this is the power of the Tea Party that has now come back to bite the Republican leadership,” and even “I think there's a civil war going on right now and it's becoming apparent.” Then he said they're setting up Obama's re-election: What's striking to me is — speaking of what you were saying, it looks to me like they're setting up Barack Obama's reelection. I mean, they are positioning themselves as extremists. They want to cut things like Head Start, policemen on the street, you know, funding for scientific research in America. You know, people are not going to — people are going to look at this and say, look, yes, we're concerned about the deficit, but we don't want to kill jobs, kill the economy. Republicans, why would they be doing this? Even the Chamber of Commerce doesn't want this. William Kristol didn't fight Williams: “I think what Juan says shouldn't be dismissed out of hand by conservatives and Republicans….the White House is going to spend the next week saying do you realize that you, your Republican representatives just voted to cut x numbers of jobs from your police force. It will be unfair, some of these statements. But it's still, an x number of jobs from your public library and x number of emergency responders and why don't you ask your Republican congressman, your new congressman, about this at a town hall meeting. It will be interesting to see whether the new members or the old members, too, can answer those questions instantly. It will be interesting to see where public opinion is.” It won't be “interesting” to see where public opinion is. It's “interesting” that somehow we're having the federal government paying for (or getting slashed for cutting) police departments that should be locally funded, to state just one example. (The same could be said of Head Start programs.)
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on February 13, 2011. Filed under