From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On the Senate Resolutions—

MORT KONDRACKE: I think that [Dem. And GOP resolutions] should both come up for a vote. It would be a very good snapshot of where the country is at the moment. . . . However, what the Democrats don’t want to do is put themselves on record as saying we are not going to defund this war because down the line, believe me they are going to want to defund the war.
FRED BARNES: You know, one of the reasons the Democrats don’t want the Gregg resolution is because it would cover . . . at least 10,000 members of the surge that are already there in Iraq. [I]f you pass the Gregg amendment you would have to break your word if you voted for it and then try to defund the soldiers over there.
HUME: So, who wins in this?
BARNES: Well so far, McConnell, but you know, somebody’s going — somebody’s going to have to give and I think it’s the Democrats.

—On Giuliani’s Candidacy—

MARA LIASSON: Look, he said he’s going to appoint conservative judges. I don’t know if that really obviates all of the other positions he’s taken with social conservatism.
BARNES: I think people that care about what he’s saying out on the stump, I don’t think they’re going to dwell on what [party] line he was on . . . when he was running in New York.
The truth is, I think he has an excellent chance of winning the nomination. I wouldn’t make him the frontrunner right now, I think the McCain still is. But people like him. There’s a reason why his polls have stood up so well, it’s not because voters are stupid and don’t know about his social liberalism, which is there. But he’s not running on it. He’s running on these other things and he’s not trying to stick his views on abortion and gay civil unions and so on down the throats of conservative voters who don’t want that.
He’s running on low taxes and what he did in New York. I think there are two striking things about Rudy Giuliani that no other candidate can match — one, it’s the whole 9/11 thing, where he was in a crisis and we saw how he performed. He performed extremely well. And secondly, it’s New York City when he was mayor. You know, you can go to New York City and feel and see the difference that he made in that city as mayor. And I don’t think you can say that about any mayor in any other city in the country.