George Will

Conservatives must have thought they died and went to heaven when the Roundtable segment of ABC’s This Week began Sunday.

There were syndicated columnist George Will and talk radio’s Laura Ingraham facing off on the state of the Republican presidential race (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Given his high unfavorable rating, Newt Gingrich “cannot win a national election,” MSNBC’s very liberal host Lawrence O’Donnell insisted early Saturday night when it became clear Gingrich would win the South Carolina primary, “it’s impossible.” O’Donnell’s assessment, however, is held beyond left-wingers animating MSNBC shows.  

Saturday night, Fox News veteran Brit Hume asserted: “Republicans in Congress will be terrified to run with this man for fear they will lose the House and the Senate.” Sunday morning on ABC, George Will imagined “people are waking up who are running for office as Republicans – from dog-catcher to Senate – and they’re saying, ‘good God, Newt Gingrich might be at top of this ticket.’”

George Will on ABC's This Week Sunday had a truly epic smack down on the perilously liberal editor of the perilously liberal magazine The Nation.

After Katrina vanden Heuvel waxed rhapsodic about President Obama at next week's State of the Union address laying out "a vision for a different economy, one that is not about crony capitalism, but is about a democratic capitalism that lifts all boats," Will struck back, "His slogan will be, what, 'No More Solyndras?'" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

George Will on Sunday marvelously told liberal economist Robert Reich something that many conservatives have been dying to say for years.

During a fascinating Right vs. Left debate on ABC's This Week, after Reich predictably pined for higher income tax rates to solve all that ails us, Will struck back with the line of the weekend, "You are a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Paul Krugman, who three months ago called for space aliens to invade earth in order to get the government to spend more money, attacked Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on ABC's This Week Sunday referring to the former House Speaker as "a stupid man's idea of what a smart man sounds like" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Call it Niall Ferguson's Pauline Kael moment . . . During the roundtable segment this morning on ABC's This Week, Ferguson, an academic with appointments at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, said that "all the Texans I know" can't stand Rick Perry.

Ferguson was reacting to host Christiane Amanpour's question about Perry's highly-animated New Hampshire address.  Ferguson professed to like the "swaggering Texan" side of Perry he apparently saw in the speech.  George Will had a caustic comeback.  Video after the jump.

George Will and Donna Brazile had a telling exchange on ABC's "This Week" Sunday.

After Will listed all the excuses President Obama makes for the poor economy, Brazile said, "I thought you were going to mention media" leading Will to smartly retort, "They're not his problem" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

With Irene downgraded to a tropical storm, it is clear that this weather event has become another example of America's media hyping every potential crisis into a full-blown calamity before the fact.

Observing such was George Will on ABC's "This Week" Sunday who told his fellow panelists, "Whatever else you want to say about journalism, it shouldn’t subtract from the nation’s understanding and it certainly shouldn’t contribute to the manufacture of synthetic hysteria that is so much a part of modern life" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As government spending supporters in the media press for a new, bolder stimulus plan to get the economy going, they love to refer to the Depression Era Hoover Dam as a shining moment in Keynesian economics.

When this surfaced on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, George Will marvelously noted, "You couldn't build the Hoover Dam today because they'd discover a snail darter in the Colorado River and would stop it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ABC's Cokie Roberts said something on national television Sunday that made her colleague George Will shake his head on camera.

During a "This Week" discussion about the recent credit rating downgrade by Standard and Poor's Roberts said, 'The problem that we have here is the Constitution of the United States of America which actually does require people to come together from different perspectives" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, former Obama administration car czar Steve Rattner last month called Tea Partiers terrorists on national television.

On Sunday's "This Week," George Will took Rattner on for making such an inflammatory statement (video follows with transcript and commentary):

George Will and Paul Krugman had another great debate Sunday about the role of government spending in stimulating the economy.

As the New York Times columnist predictably whined about the need for more federal spending not less, ABC's lone conservative said on "This Week," "It would be good to go to the electorate and have a Krugman election this time, saying: resolved, the government is too frugal - let's vote" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

People that have been watching Chris Matthews since the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire last month know that the devout liberal has suddenly and quite mysteriously developed a soft spot for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

On Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show," the host actually said to his guests, "I wonder whether cerebral writers like George Will and David Brooks, bright people, are not really in tune with that base out there that she is" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Democrat strategist and ABC contributor Donna Brazile on Sunday predictably blamed the current debt ceiling impasse on Republicans and their refusal to raise taxes.

This led George Will to state what would be obvious to all media members if they weren't so in the tank for Barack Obama, namely that he and his Party have been kicking the deficit can down the road so long they're guilty of "can abuse" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously noted, ABC's "This Week" began its Independence Day weekend program disparaging the Founding Fathers as guys who didn't let women vote and allowed slavery.

What followed was a Roundtable discussion about the Constitution which got quite interesting when the host brought up ObamaCare and George Will marvelously asked the group, "Does Congress have the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers? If not, why not?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Despite Obamanomics' failure to stimulate the economy, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman still believes Washington can solve all that ails us if we would just spend more money we don't have.

Toward that end, the avowed liberal in his Monday New York Times column called for a new New Deal-like program to hire unemployed people to - wait for it - repair roads:

With rumors flying around this Memorial Day weekend that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is about to toss her hat in the ring of Republican presidential candidates, it was not surprising the Roundtable segment of Sunday's "This Week" began with this issue.

Even less surprising was that George Will kicked off the segment with something clever to say about it (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The President’s secret meetings with Fareed Zakaria – the same reporter who openly used a CNN network broadcast to promote Obama in 2008 – show a clear and disturbing double standard at CNN.

For decades, the liberal media have repeatedly condemned conservatives in the media who communicated privately with Republican presidents. They furiously attacked George Will in 1980 when he advised candidate Ronald Reagan, and trounced on Roger Ailes when he sent President Bush a note about the new war on terror in the wake of September 11th.  Neither of them was a reporter.

ABC's Jonathan Karl last week asked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) if his 2012 budget proposal is a "political kamikaze mission" that will "ultimately cost Republicans" their majority in the House.

After Christiane Amanpour played this clip and asked if Ryan is a "visionary or a villain" on Sunday's "This Week," George Will marvelously responded - likely to the dismay of all present! - "Paul Ryan is eight years younger than the President but vastly more experienced and conversant with these issues" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

George Will on Sunday's "This Week" said what likely has been on the minds of right-thinking Americans for many decades.

"NPR is run by people who don't like people like me" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, George Will this weekend lambasted Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee about separate comments the two have made regarding Barack Obama's background and upbringing.

On Monday, during his fifth day in a row on this subject, MSNBC's Chris Matthews actually compared Will's column to William F. Buckley Jr. banning anti-Semitic writers from the National Review in the '50s (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 On the Sunday, March 6, Good Morning America on ABC, as the Daily Beast’s John Avlon appeared as a guest to make predictions about which Republicans will ultimately choose to run for President, he ended up complaining that "Obama Derangement Syndrome" has recently "gotten worse" and "deserves to be called out" because it is "divisive" and "unnecessary."

Host Dan Harris asked Avlon about his recent criticisms of Republicans: "I know you're no stranger to the Republican Party. You used to be the chief speech writer for Rudy Giuliani when he was the mayor of New York City. You’ve been pretty critical - I would say scathingly critical - of the type of rhetoric Republican, potential Republican candidates have been using against the current President, Mr. Obama. Why?"

Avlon began his response:

Well, because, look, I think there's no question that the Obama Derangement Syndrome on the right was preceded by a Bush Derangement Syndrome on the left, but it’s gotten worse. We’ve seen this sort of anti rhetoric saying that President Obama is somehow anti-American or un-American bubbling up to the upper reaches of the presidential campaign. And that deserves to be called out. It's divisive. It's unnecessary.

He then continued:

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was lambasted by numerous liberal media outlets for comments he made to conservative radio host Steve Malzberg regarding President Obama's past.

Surprisingly joining in the harsh criticism was George Will whose column to be published in Sunday's Washington Post also excoriated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as well as Malzberg:

ABC News prominently featured the anti-American television network Al Jazeera on "This Week" Sunday.

Not only was the network's Washington bureau chief afforded a good amount of time during the Roundtable segment to sing Al Jazeera's praises, but as the show neared its conclusion, Sam Donaldson actually thanked the organization (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A former ambassador to Afghanistan said Sunday that revelations in Bob Woodward's book "Obama's Wars" were "far more damaging" to U.S.-Afghani relations than what recently was released by WikiLeaks.

Speaking to Christiane Amanpour on the Roundtable segment of ABC's "This Week," the following statement by Zalmay Khalilzad is sure to raise some eyebrows in our nation's capital (video follows with transcript and commentary):