Chris Wallace asks Bill Kristol if it’s bad news for the GOP if the Democrats are pushing to crack down on Wall Street and the Republicans are blocking it. To the surprise of everyone on the panel, after attacking President Obama for treating the American public like they’re stupid, Kristol actually suggests that the Republicans should “think about breaking up the banks”. I await Kristol trying to pretend he didn’t actually say this in about a week.
Kristol: If one has a view of the voters that they’re really simple minded and they… the Democrats get to say over and over again as President Obama says over and over again, Wall Street bad, this bill anti-Wall Street, you should be for this bill. That’s sort of the level of the rhetoric the President’s engaging in and it’s the same view of the voters that we talked about in the last session with the tea partiers. Hey, you guys got a little tax benefit there. You should be grateful to me. Hey, Wall Street bad, you should support me.
Let’s have a serious debate on the bill. It’s quite complicated. The fact is a serious critique of the bill is, Fannie, Freddie, AIG, the five big banks, all too big to fail. This bill does nothing about that. It makes none of them too big to fail. There are some good things in the bill. There’s some bad things in the bill.
It doesn’t address the problem that led to the financial meltdown and that problem can be addressed I think in conservative ways, through bankruptcy law and possibly through breaking up the banks. I think Republicans do need to be a little radical on their side in thinking through what the right solution is, but I’m not so convinced as everyone else that President Obama just gets to say Goldman Sachs bad, this bill anti-Wall Street. Everyone support this bill.
Liasson: Republicans are for breaking up the big banks?
Kristol: They should think about breaking up the banks.
Liasson: That would be a truly… then they would join with Bernie Sanders and the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Kristol: Yeah. You’ve got to be imaginative sometimes, huh?
Williams: Well, let me just say that I don’t think Americans are simple minded when 80 plus percent of Americans think that Wall Street is greedy and that they contributed to the financial collapse that we are experiencing as a country and they want some reform. And in fact what’s serious to me is in addition to the fact that they think that we may have another collapse because of Wall Street’s excesses within the next three years is that they really want reform without even looking at the content. Americans are so concerned about what’s going on on Wall Street, they want some reform. They don’t care what the content is.
Kristol: That’s the beauty of the American public. They don’t care about the content. Throw anything in…
Williams: That’s not simple minded.
Kristol: $50 billion bailout fund, don’t address too big to fail, but hey American public will just go along like sheep because the President says it’s reform.
No Bill, that's what Republicans do. Repeat the same talking points over and over with no regard to whether there's an ounce of truth to them, just like you did here.
