From Fox’s Special Report with Bret Baier | Tuesday, February 14, 2012
On Congressional negotiations over the payroll tax cut extension:
It’s the perfect example of what all the [congressional] fights are about. This is a free lunch presidency. But he now wants to add dinner and breakfast onto the menu.
The Republicans are the ones trying to act, in some way, responsibly. They tried to on the debt ceiling and they tried to in December on the payroll tax. It wasn’t that they opposed the cut. It was, they said: If we are going to have $100 billion added to the debt for something that will do nothing [to] stimulate the economy or create jobs… at least we’re going to try to offset it with spending cuts.
Obama opposed it and in the end he won in a rout. And that is why the Republicans are now rethinking this in an election year. They are not going to allow Obama to out-cynic them, which he did in December.
On Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum’s prospects:
I still think he [Gingrich] will have strength in the south, but I don’t think he has a path to the nomination. I don’t think it will discourage him…. He will go all the way to Tampa.
But I think what’s really interesting is how Santorum has chosen his targets. I think Michigan is a lot about the symbolism. In the same way that he understood, as most observers didn’t, the importance of the three states that were run last week: Minnesota, Colorado, Missouri. Everybody said there were no delegates at stake. And there weren’t….
But he showed if he took on Romney one-on-one, which had been his argument — and in Missouri, Gingrich wasn’t on the ballot and he [Santorum] beat Romney by 30 points. So he not only was able to show how weak Romney is if he’s up against a plausibly presidential opponent, but he also was able to push Gingrich out of way. Perhaps not out, but out of the way.
And that is what he will try to do in Michigan because it’s Romney’s home turf.
If he defeats Romney in Michigan, the game starts all over, it’s the first quarter, and the score is zero-zero.