From Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace: —On Iraq—

WALLACE: Brit, even with this surge, it’s going to take a while, isn’t it?
BRIT HUME: Well, I think it is. I don’t think it’s mission impossible to get and keep troops in Iraq for some considerable period of time. I think the public would be fine with that on one condition, and that is that the tide seems to turn in favor of the U.S. and the Iraqi government and not in favor of the insurgents.
What I don’t think the public will stand for, and what frustrates the public now, is the sense that we have all these troops over there and the insurgents seem to be winning. The Iraqi government doesn’t seem to be making much progress toward the kind of political settlement of major issues that might help to quell the insurgency and bring people together in that country.
Those two elements, some serious military progress and political progress, would probably mean we could keep troops there for quite a long period of time if the situation were better. After all, we’ve still got troops in Kosovo, but most people don’t notice that.
WALLACE: How close is the president to losing the support of his own party? And how nervous are Republicans getting about Iraq as they look forward to the 2008 election?
BILL KRISTOL: Well, they’re plenty nervous, as elected officials often are. They’re being extremely stupid. I mean, the idea that they will get credit for deserting the war at this point — they voted for the war. They voted to fund the war. Now they’re going to, what, vote for withdrawal, for surrender, and have the whole country dissolve into chaos, and have parts of Anbar become a terrorist sanctuary, and then they’re going to go to the voters, Republican congressmen, in 2008 and say, “Hey, reelect us. We voted for the war. We voted to support the war. Then we voted to snatch defeat out of what are potentially the jaws of victory.” It’s a ridiculous political calculation as well as a dishonorable one.

—On Obama and Hillary—

HUME: Well, I think that the Obama ascendancy, which appeared to be an upward trajectory that could go to any level, appears to have bumped up against something. He does not seem to be able to gain further ground on her.
Now, a lot could change. We keep saying it’s early. But her lead has become pretty persistent at this point and something that I think needs to be taken note of. It’s kind of hard at this point to look ahead and imagine her not getting the nomination.
KRISTOL: I think it’s possible to imagine it, but what’s happened in the last three weeks, what event to distinguish Clinton and Obama? She was tougher in terror on the debate. And so for a party that’s allegedly so dovish, it turns out they seem to be rewarding her a little bit for sounding more like a commander in chief and less like a first responder in chief.
And I think, again, this is why the Democrats on the Hill are endangering their presidential prospects by seeming as if all they want to do is not fight al Qaeda. Senator Clinton actually knows that the next commander in chief, the next president, is going to have to fight al Qaeda.