From Fox News Sunday.

On how town-hall protests have affected the health-care debate:

Astonishingly, I was wrong. Empirical evidence is in. Remarkably, the protests have had an effect of galvanizing opposition.
I would have thought with some of the images, and particularly the way the media have played it, as rowdies, as — portraying them essentially as a mob – that it would have a negative effect. In fact, it has had the opposite effect.
And I think the reason is that the Democrats in these town halls have had to defend the indefensible. They’ve been stuck with stuff in the bills like the public option that are not going to end up in the final analysis in any legislation.
But because it was already in the discussions and in committee and already out there, it had to be defended, even though it will be shed in — at the end of the day.
So defending these extremely unpopular elements — the public option and the end-of-life counseling as another example, which has already been jettisoned — they have been stuck with defending proposals that are not going to be there in the end and that are really hurting them.