Krauthammer: Hillary’s Decision on Pacific Trade Could ‘Provoke’ Warren To Enter Race

KRAUTHAMMER: "I think when you have a 50-point lead and you can’t take a position on an issue that is so obvious, her husband supported it with NAFTA. She obviously wants to walk it back. She said it was the gold standard. It shows a certain lack — it’s not exactly a profile in courage. Michael Kinsley, the famously liberal editor of The New Republic once said to me, there’s not a lot of proposition in economics or politics that are mathematically provable to be true. Free trade being a net good is one of those few demonstrated by David Ricardo in 1817. That’s two centuries and it remains unrefuted. The problem is there are winners and losers. There is a net benefit but there are losers and the losers are Democrats, the losers are unions. They are identifiable and they speak out. I think what Hillary is going to do — even though she knows this is the right thing to do and it’s going to be a really good deal — she will not oppose it on principal. She’ll say if it’s worked out, I haven’t seen the details, she’ll delay until it’s published until it can be read. Then I think she will oppose it by saying, well, you know, it’s just the way it’s written. There are things inside of it, if I become president, I’ll try to improve it. I think she’ll get herself on the correct side for her own left as a way to prevent Elizabeth Warren. I could see her getting so upset about this and making it her big issue that it could provoke her entering the race, and as Steve [Hayes] said, the one thing she wants to do, Hillary, is to keep Warren out of the race because she is the only one who can challenge her."