Discussing the midterm elections Wednesday night, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer told “Special Report” host Bret Baier the Republican victories were “the worst wall-to-wall, national, unmistakable, unequivocal shellacking that you will ever see” and a “nuclear explosion.”
Krauthammer: Obama played as the puzzled observer. He was asked about the meaning of the election, and he said “I’ll leave to others the reading of tea leaves.” Was this really a subtle result? Was this sort of complicated and nuanced? This was the worst wall-to-wall, national, unmistakable, unequivocal shellacking that you will ever see in a midterm election, and it happened on just about every level. You’ve got in the House the Republicans now have the largest majority since 1929.
In the Senate, the Democrats have lost seven, probably nine, and by huge margins, McConnell is supposed to be neck-and-neck, he won by 15 points, Arkansas 18 points. And then the — the one excuse the Republicans have is “well this election was played on their home turf, on red turf.” Well, you know, Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois are not exactly red states. All of them elected, shockingly, Republican governors. “The Economist” called this a massacre and Obama says, “I don’t read tea leaves,” and remember, what he said about the election. It’s about his policies, everywhere, every single one. Of course it was about him, of course it was his ideology and the execution of his leadership. This was a wall-to-wall rejection of Obama-ism and he pretended that this was an election that didn’t have a lot of meaning because two-thirds of the electorate didn’t show up.
The race I liked the most was the one in Maryland, where I live, where the Lt. Governor Anthony Brown was considered such a shoe-in, no one spoke about the Maryland race. No one. You didn’t hear a word, and the Republican, Larry Hogan, came out of nowhere. He won by 8 points. This tells you — the reason I like it, it shows the extent of this political event into the bluest of the blue, Maryland. It wasn’t a tea leaf election. It was a nuclear explosion.
