Last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at a campaign rally for Democrat Martha Coakley and told her liberal audience “don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”
On Monday night, the entire panel on Fox News’ Special Report w/ Bret Baier eagerly mocked Ms. Clinton's comments with Chuck Lane of the Washington Post joking that he “thought NBC created a job for Chelsea so there is at least one corporation that has created a job.”
Earlier in the segment, the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley profoundly condemned Ms. Clinton’s comments:
This was a clumsy attempt to critique supply side economics which this country is no danger of returning to under President Obama. What we need is a critique of Keynesian economics. That’s what we’ve been experiencing. Government spending as a stimulus. How is that going for us? The slowest recovery in a generation or two. That's what I would like it hear her defense of.
After Riley pointed out that America needed to reevaluate Keynesian economics being pushed by Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Obama, Chuck Lane piled on Ms. Clinton one final time:
But, she has made quite a few gaffes now since this unofficial presidential campaign has gotten underway. And this one is going to have legs. Because you can put it into a little sound bite. You can turn it into an ad for the opposition and you can repeat it over and over and over again. And it's obviously not a sensible comment because she herself had to walk it back.
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer concluded the segment by insisting that Hillary's anti-business comments could hurt her in the 2016 presidential election:
It will be played again and again. It's a signal to Democrats. I mean, if you can't make the elementary liberal argument about the role of government without having this ridiculous statement that jobs are not created by corporations, then you are not going to be a good candidate as she showed in 2008.
She is a person who said in the White House we were dead broke. We had trouble paying the mortgages on our houses. If you are going to plead poverty you don’t refer to your homes in the plural. That's pretty elementary. She is not getting the elementary stuff.
See relevant transcript below.
Fox News
Special Report w/ Bret Baier
October 27, 2014
HILLARY CLINTON: Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory trickle-down economics. That has been tried. That has failed.
BRET BAIER: Don’t let anybody tell you that corporations and businesses create jobs. There was a clarification from Hillary Clinton today at a campaign event trying to get the tape but here's the quote. “So-called trickle-down economics has failed. I shorthanded this point the other day. So let me be absolutely clear about what I have been saying for a couple of decades, our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good paying jobs here in an America where workers and families in America are empowered to build from the middle up and the middle out. Not when we hang out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas.”
We're back with the panel. Jason I think when any politician says let me be absolutely clear, you know that there is something that has not been absolutely clear and clearly was a mistake. For a few days, there was a defense about this statement saying this is exactly what she meant to say and it's old news.
JASON RILEY: This was a clumsy attempt to critique supply side economics which this country is no danger of returning to under President Obama. What we need is a critique of Keynesian economics. That’s what we’ve been experiencing. Government spending as a stimulus. How is that going for us? The slowest recovery in a generation or two. That's what I would like it hear her defense of.
BAIER: Yeah. Chuck?
CHUCK LANE: I don’t know, I thought NBC created a job for Chelsea so there is at least one corporation that has created a job. This is now a couple of gaffes.
BAIER: We don't actually have an actual rim shot in the studio.
LANE: Wait for Twitter to pass judgment. But, she has made quite a few gaffes now since this unofficial presidential campaign has gotten underway. And this one is going to have legs. Because you can put it into a little sound bite. You can turn it into an ad for the opposition and you can repeat it over and over and over again. And it's obviously not a sensible comment because she herself had to walk it back. I would just note look who she is with. She is campaigning with Martha Coakley.
BAIER: Who is in trouble.
LANE: Who in big trouble in Massachusetts. And I'm not sure this is the statement from her surrogate campaign that is going to lift her out of that.
BAIER: I don't know if she was trying to make a correlation since she was in Massachusetts to Romney's corporations are people. I wasn't sure how it happened but it looked like it was part of the remarks, Charles. I mean, part of the planned thing that she was going to say.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Well, sort of the guru of this kind of argument is Elizabeth Warren who is very articulate in saying that the government is instrumental, society is instrumental in creating success and jobs and a successful economy. And not so much entrepreneurs or individuals. She’s the best. Remember there was an attempt at recapitulating to this, Obama made in 2008 when he said if you built it, if you have success, it's not you. He botched it. Now she got it worse.
Hers was like a D on the scale of D to A. She was trying to take a stab at this idea that government that it's not sort of individual capitalism and corporations, those evil corporations but it had no elaboration and it is going to haunt her. I think, Chuck, despite the fact that he wasn't able to rise above the Ad hominem. Chuck had it exactly right it will be shown over and over again. But it does show you how much the Democrats overestimate her skill as a politician.
BAIER: So you think this is more detrimental then "You didn't build that."
KRAUTHAMMER: It will be played again and again. It's a signal to Democrats. I mean, if you can't make the elementary liberal argument about the role of government without having this ridiculous statement that jobs are not created by corporations, then you are not going to be a good candidate as she showed in 2008. She is a person who said in the White House we were dead broke. We had trouble paying the mortgages on our houses. If you are going to plead poverty you don’t refer to your homes in the plural. That's pretty elementary. She is not getting the elementary stuff.
