Ingraham Obliterates Will Over GOP Exit

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LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham and self-described conservative columnist George Will sparred over his party affiliation during a Monday evening segment on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

Will announced over the weekend that he had changed his registration from “Republican” to “unaffiliated” because “this is not my party” — saying that he could not support Trump as the nominee in good conscience. Baier began the panel segment by asking Will about his thought process.

“I think just on the Supreme Court alone, that is just a catastrophic loss for conservatism”

“You said the Republican Party is leaving you,” Baier posed to Will, but “Donald Trump is saying that you lost your way long ago.”

“I think I’ll find my way, even without his guidance,” Will responded. “I think the Republican Party is in some turmoil. Turmoil can be healthy. And there are those who say we should wait and rule the rubble after November.”

Will’s “abandon ship” did not sit well with Ingraham.

“It’s a pretty big gamble to think that we can withstand four years of Hillary Clinton, knowing what she’s going to do,” Ingraham responded. “We know what she’s going to do. It’s very clear,” Ingraham added.

In particular Ingraham noted what’s at stake for the future of conservatism on the Supreme Court.

“[Clinton’s] laid it out a radical left-wing agenda, [with] at least two seats [at stake] on the Supreme Court. We’ve seen two terrible decisions just in the past two days. We saw a terrible affirmative action decision. We saw an abortion decision, which was 5-3, so it wouldn’t have made a difference with Scalia. But nevertheless, two seats would make a difference. So, I think just on the Supreme Court alone, that is just a catastrophic loss for conservatism. Anyone who cares about original meaning, original intent, and everyone from Steve Colloton to Alison Eid, who are both on Trump’s short list of Supreme Court justices, would be fabulous.”

“I respect George and people can do whatever they want in November, but that’s a big gamble,” Ingraham continued.

Will admitted that it was a “serious consideration,” but not enough to keep him loyal to the choice of the voters in the GOP.

“That’s a serious consideration, and those who have supreme confidence in Donald Trump’s jurisprudential thinking, they can say, well, perhaps he should be trusted with that. On the other hand, there are two other branches of government to worry about,” Will said.

Later on in the discussion, Ingraham and Will clashed a bit more intensely over the issue of Trump’s trade and economic policies. The scuffle began when Baier asked them if the GOP is “changing” or “shifting” on the issue of trade — or if it is just temporary.

“Why should we sell out our sovereignty and our economic future to some unaccountable bureaucrats in the international trade commission?”

“Trump is for trade deals that work for the American people,” Ingraham said. “And the last three big trade deals – NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], even the Korean Free Trade Deal, and obviously China going to the WTO [World Trade Organization], have been disastrous for the American worker. He’s not against trade. He’s for smart trade.”

But Will wasn’t buying it, and he insisted that the GOP’s position on trade, anchored in the cloistered thinking of academics, was only “shifting somewhat” under Trump’s lead.

“The only academic field that has moved to the right in the last 50 years is economics, in part because the Chicago School and others — Milton Friedman, [George] Stigler and the rest — have convinced the world of what seemed to be pretty obvious from David Ricardo on, which is that under the doctrine of comparative advantage, everyone benefits from free trade. That is now in doubt,” Will said.

“What Mr. Trump is doing is going back to — he’s a good 19th-century Republican. [The government] was funded by selling land and tariffs, and the Republican Party was the party of tariffs to protect industry,” Will said, “It was crony capitalism written large.”

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Ingraham refuted Will’s claims, noting that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush supported temporary tariffs, and thus the idea was nothing new to the GOP.

“It’s nice to cite high [economists], and Milton Friedman, and that all sounds very high and intellectual. But the bottom line is, if the trade deals cost so much to enforce for American corporations, at what point does America stand up and say, ‘You know something, we actually have to stand up for ourselves’?” Ingraham said.

“It doesn’t mean that you just slap tariffs on anything for just fun. But when we are not getting relief, and the cheating is notorious, why should we sell out our sovereignty and our economic future to some unaccountable bureaucrats in the international trade commission?”

Trump, slated to give a major general election speech on his economic plans Tuesday, has not even gone as far as explicitly supporting tariffs as Will suggested, but has been a fierce advocate for fairer, better free trade deals that do not cede U.S. sovereignty.