Offering his initial thoughts on Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate on the 11:00 p.m. Eastern edition of CNN’s AC360, CNN political commentator and Hillary Clinton super PAC head Paul Begala complained that Republicans possess “dominant emotion” of “fear” that they’ve somehow used to instill fear in Americans following recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.
The former Clinton administration staffer declared: “I thought that the dominant emotion that all of the candidates were trying to tap into was fear. Republicans, especially in America, are fearful especially after the attack in San Bernardino, the slaughter in Paris.”
As if he never tried to scare Americans into voting one way or another, Begala continued lamenting that GOPers have “fed that fear and they hyped that fear so much” with rhetoric by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz that he deemed to have been “extraordinary.”
Pulling another piece out of the liberal media’s playbook, Begala dished out another dose of sudden respect for former President Ronald Reagan and how the GOP has drifted away from his values:
So the fear, I found remarkable and for the party of Ronald Reagan, who I thought was terrific at invoking opposition to the Soviet Union without giving into this kind of remarkable fear and I think they have come a long way from Ronald Reagan.
The relevant portion of the transcript from CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Post Debate Special on December 15 can be found below.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Post Debate Special
December 15, 2015
11:15 p.m. Eastern
PAUL BEGALA: I thought that the dominant emotion that all of the candidates were trying to tap into was fear. Republicans, especially in America, are fearful especially after the attack in San Bernardino, the slaughter in Paris. I understand that, I really do, but they fed that fear and they hyped that fear so much so that Donald Trump, this is an amazing moment, I have never seen this before in a presidential debate. Donald Trump said he would purposely kill the family members — innocent family members of a terrorist. That's extraordinary. Ted Cruz called for carpet bombing which is, by definition, indiscriminate killing of everyone in that region and later he said he wanted targeting carpet bombing, so it was completely inconsistent. So the fear, I found remarkable and for the party of Ronald Reagan, who I thought was terrific at invoking opposition to the Soviet Union without giving into this kind of remarkable fear and I think they have come a long way from Ronald Reagan.
