Hayes: Krauthammer and Kondracke on McCain, Romney and the Surge

Interesting. Both Charles Krauthammer and Mort Kondracke think Mitt Romney was talking about withdrawal in that interview with Robin Roberts of ABC last spring. (Brit Hume and Fred Barnes do not.) I post this not to provoke my friends supporting Romney. Rather, I'm throwing it up here because it's been awfully lonely making this argument over the last week while many of the conservatives with whom I usually share views thought McCain was being "dishonest." It's not only nice to have company but to have company this distinguished. Here is the entire interesting exchange from Brit Hume's show last night. Fox played a video of Romney clarifying his intentions: "Absolutely, unequivocally, absolutely no, I have never, ever supported a specific timetable for exit from Iraq. And it is offensive to me that someone would suggest that I have." The, John McCain: "The debate after the election of 2006, was whether we were going to have timetables for withdrawal or not. ' Timetables' were(sic) the buzz word. That was the Iraq study group. That was what the Democrats said we wanted to do. Your answer should have been 'no.'"

HUME: Romney said his answer was indeed no when the follow-up question came if the Congress sent you a bill with a timetable withdrawal in it, would do as the president has said he would do and veto it? And he said yes, indeed he would. Some thoughts on this controversy which dominated last night's debate from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mort Kondracke, Executive Editor of "Roll Call," and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fox News contributors all. Well, Charles, what about this exchange last night? What about the performance of these two men who were clearly center stage, much to the annoyance of Mike Huckabee last night, in this debate out in California? CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I must say for most of the debate McCain was not at his best. He was irascible, self-righteous, and on a couple of issues, appalling. However, on this particular exchange, I looked at this quotation every which way, and even though McCain exaggerated, this is not exactly the equivalent of waving the flag the way that Hillary did in her response to a question about withdrawal in a debate. Romney protests too much. He pretends that what he is talking about in discussions with Maliki about timetables and benchmarks is about everything except withdrawal. It's about troop training and rotation, et cetera. However, the sentence after he talks about timetables he says "you want this in private, you don't want it in public, because otherwise the enemy will know what you are leaving." HUME: Wasn't that one of the big arguments against a timetable? KRAUTHAMMER: That's the argument against, he says, against the public declaration of it. But he's implying that you don't want to say publicly, but if you are saying that a public announcement will alert Al-Queda about your leaving, it means that the private discussion was about your leaving. So, in fact, McCain is right. And, look, this was in response to a question about withdrawal. It's not to say that somehow Romney is a traitor or he's calling for an immediate exit. He was hedging. He hedged in April, and it was not unreasonable. Nobody had any idea that the surge would be such a success. A policy maker would actually have to think what do you do if it doesn't succeed? And we are now having discussions with Maliki about a long-term agreement in which we will have timetables of withdrawal, ultimately. But in April of last year, and then in December of the year before, obviously, Romney hedged on support of the surge. And McCain is right, that he staked everything on the surge because he believed that it's better to lose an election than to lose a war. MORT KONDRAKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "ROLL CALL": I agree with Charles. The question that Robin Roberts put to Romney was do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops? His answer is to take the idea of the timetable and say, no, we will not have a public timetable. But he was talking about timetable, and the question was about withdrawing troops. What would McCain have said in response to that? Withdraw? Bunk withdrawal. We're in this to win this. He did not say that. I think this was another example of Mitt Romney wanting it both ways. Yes, he uses the word, he wants to imply he's making some distance, just in case, to keep himself-- HUME: But McCain accused him of favoring a timetable of withdrawal, of calling for one. Is that fair? KONDRAKE: That is clearly over the top. It is a charge that is over the top. But, still, Romney was not four square behind the surge. HUME: I think it can be stipulated by probably everybody, perhaps even including Romney, that nobody was more for the surge among this field of candidates than John McCain was. Certainly that's an indisputable fact. The question really for me was why in the world would McCain need to say this about Romney during the Florida campaign where McCain was, a, ahead, and Romney wasn't claiming that McCain wasn't the strongest advocate of the surge? KRAUTHAMMER: Because it's a tough attack and it works. FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": He wanted to change the subject. The subject had become the economy. That's Mitt Romney's strongest suit, and it's one of McCain's weaker suits. And so he wanted to change the subject. And the truth is he succeeded in changing the subject to Iraq. Now, look, everybody agrees nobody is stronger in supporting the war in Iraq and the surge, in particular, than John McCain. Nobody admires him for doing this more than I do, except for perhaps President Bush. He has been great on this. But what he has accused Romney of is Clintonian. That's exactly what it is. He has taken something that Romney has and twisted it to mean something it doesn't mean at all. I think it's pretty clear he is not talking about some firm timetable that you're going to get the troops out. The Pentagon talks about these things all the time publicly about bringing troops out, or at least leaks stories, and that's a mistake. It is a little like exactly what the Clintons have done. In order words, what McCain was saying is basically you can't mention the word "timetable." That's buzzword. You can't mention it without condemning it in any form. And on the Democratic side, you can't mention the word Ronald Reagan without condemning him. Obviously, McCain didn't need to do this, shouldn't have done it, and it certainly isn't straight talk.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin beat me to it and notes that the McCain campaign sent out the video of the exchange. I didn't get that. I posted the transcript after a short discussion with Krauthammer last night (and a long, cross-country flight today).