Fred Gives Fox A Spanking

Once again Fred had a great appearance on a Sunday morning news show. He was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace (whom I like and whom I think did a good job on this interview).

Chris started by giving Fred the opportunity to give an overview of his tax plan (covered in a previous post). It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Chris argues that their folk analyzed this and decided that this will remove $2.5 trillion from the tax rolls over the next 10 years and so he asks Fred how he would cut spending. Fred's initial answer is right but not strongly worded enough--the "losses" will not be that much because it will invigorate the economy that will generate more tax revenue. On the other hand, I think Fred would LIKE to see the tax revenues reduced (as would I).

On spending, Fred's example was Social Security, which he says will save $4.7 trillion (don't know over what period of time). The weakness of this is that these are two separate pots of money, though I think it clearly shows that he understands that there are ways to save money. "The spending is going to have to be addressed on the basis of the entitlement difficulties."

They moved onto abortion. Fred focused on the fact that his position is achievable, but the HLA is not achievable. He also points out that his opponent on this, Huckabee wanted this as recently as last year. Chris argued that his position was pro-choice because it gave the States the ability to choose (?). Weird argument, Chris. In talking about the concern of the States not choosing to limit abortion Fred responded, "If we can't carry the argument ... nationwide now, we can never pass the constitutional amendment anyway." In other words, if the states won't limit abortion, what makes anyone think that we could pass an amendment?

Things turn to Fred in the polls, particularly talking about Huck. Chris invited Fred to help us understand Huck's record. Fred somewhat reluctantly pointed out the abortion shift mentioned above; taxes--Cato Institute gave him a D- on taxes; illegal immigration--resisted the legislature from restricting illegal immigration, for taxpayer funded scholarships for illegals, and objected when illegals were arrested.

Chris brought up Rudy's contention that Fred has no record. Fred brought up Rudy's record on gun control and then talked about his Federal experience as compared to Rudy's city level experience. "Rudy has not 5 minutes of experience with regard to things of those nature....when you say experience, the question is 'experience doing what'?"

Finally Chris accuses the campaign of being disappointing to which be brings up Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer criticizing Fred's campaign. "This has been a constant mantra of Fox," Fred responds. He then points out how Fox and these two in particular have really been against him since the beginning. Fred brought out the positives in the polls that contradict the "disappointing" aspect of the campaign. He also brought up National Review and Investors Business Daily positive comments on his policy statements, particularly indicating that he has done a better job than the other candidates.

Generally the tone of this last exchange was combative where Fred took Fox (and implicitly the remainder of the MSM) to task for operating in the tear down mode on his campaign without taking to account the positives going on. Fred was very strong and powerful on this exchange.

Fox News has NOT been very receptive to Fred's campaign--Fred Barnes, in particular. I think Barnes is solidly in Romney's camp and is not being very objective. I like Barnes, but he is more related to the "country club" Republican or at least an "inside the beltway" Republican which would make him lean toward Romney anyway. I like the fact that Fred took them to task for it. Chris Wallace, after being spanked, replied, "I'm glad I asked the question because I got a heck of an answer."