This Week Pits Ann Coulter Against Van Jones On Whether 'The Private Sector Is Doing Fine'

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George Stephanopoulos had a lively roundtable to host today on This Week, where the President's 'the private sector is doing fine' comment took center stage and, as one can expect, Ann Coulter and Mike Huckabee differed wildly from Ed Rendell and Van Jones on the meaning of the words. The conversation turned into a heated debate over whether the federal government should be investing in more firefighters and teachers, and whether the private sector could only grow at the expense of the public sector.

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Huckabee started things off noting that he did not expect those comments to go away, 'because the Republicans will make people remember,' and particularly 'if the economy is still this bad in October,' which could very well be the case. Jones replied that Romney had his own set of economic gaffes, arguing he he was 'glad the alarms are ringing in June, not November.' Coulter disagreed, defending Romney's 'I like to be able to fire people who work for me' comment and attacking the President's focus on public sector works. 'The country is enraged at public sector workers and he's talking about how we need to buck up the public school teachers,' she argued.

Stephanopoulos posited that he didn't quite see the problem with hiring teachers and firefighters, and Huckabee argued that the problem wasn't the hiring, but the way it was done. Coulter agreed, arguing over Rendell and Jones' protests that the problem wasn't with firemen, but that 'it's always firemen first and then we end up with 17 diversity coordinators at the public schools.' Huckabee agreed, adding he did not see how these hirings were a federal responsibility.

The segment via ABC below:

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• The Government shouldn't put their investments in ANYTHING Anymore.

  Whatever the Government puts money into, it always goes belly up, look at Solyndra, look at the Stimulus.

• Everybody was pretty funny too in addition to the arguing.

• Look at GM, look at Chrysler (via Obama and Reagan)'..oh, wait a second'

• Solyndra. Stimulus. Yep. That's 'everything'. #thedumbstupidisstronginthisone

•  What a stupid comment.  Do you even know what was in the stimulus?  Do you know the stimulus was 1/3 tax cuts?  I guess that was only OK when the R's were in charge.

  The government puts money into the military, FBI, CIA, FDA, CDC.  By your definition, all gone belly up. 

• They're all professional talking heads, even Van Jones, who probably scored the best in this clip. Ann Coulter should avoid any discussions on economics.

• We know Mr. Hucklesbee, the republicans will do everything in their power to insure the economy does not improve until November.

• 10 words you never want to hear - 

  I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.

• The ONLY 'workers' Leftists care about are public-sector ones. They have utter disdain for everyone who is not, and hiding that fact isn't going too well for them (thank you, alternate media)

  Everyone knows this to be true.

• 'If we don't run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and he will lose to Obama.'-Ann Coulter

• Would I be misogynistic to think that Ann Coulter would be much more understood and believable if she just had a ball gag in her mouth 90% of the time.

• The private sector is the economy. 

• The American taxpayer has lost tens of billions of dollars on GM and Chrysler.

• To compare the government funding of law enforcement agencies to the government funding of private companies is INSANELY stupid. 

  The DoD, FBI and CIA and other government agencies fulfill government functions and satisfy government responsibility as directed in the US Constitution.
  The government has absolutely no authority nor responsibility to insure or ensure that specific private business succeed, particularly when that 'success' come at the expense of the American taxpayer.

• Let me clear this up for you, YES.

• This is a typical liberal argument.  Conservatives talk about fiscal responsibility, real infrastructure jobs, real spending problems that need to be addressed, and the liberals say.. 'but what about the firemen?  You want less firemen?'  It's just absolutely pathetic.  They have nothing other than emotional quips meant to tug the heartstrings, and lying.

•  Your comments are really ridiculous.