On Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy”:

It’s getting wild and wacky when you hear the statement from the Speaker of the House. If I can give her the benefit of the doubt, what she probably intended — didn’t actually say (I’m not sure why I’m defending her here) — is that once you enact the bill people will see all the good stuff in it and then they’ll appreciate it and the negative public opinion on it will change.
I think that is the only argument the president and Pelosi have to persuade Democrats in the House who will get slaughtered in November over this bill.
What I see actually happening now is some of the House members who appear to be staunchly opposed might be wavering. If you take Bart Stupak, who is leading the anti-abortion faction — he is running up a white flag. He said there is a compromise that is reachable. I think in principle it is. You could find compromise language.
The problem is the procedure, because if you find compromise language it has to be done by the Senate after the House has accepted the bill that doesn’t have the compromise language. As we heard Senator Alexander explain, that means that House Democrats have to have complete trust in Harry Reid and in the Senate Democrats.
And that, I think, is the issue — the procedural labyrinth here.

On the unpopularity of Obamacare despite the popularity of various individual provisions:

If you say to people, do you like this goodie, for example, no pre-existing conditions? Everybody will say, of course. If they say in principle do you want to insure the uninsured, who is going to oppose that? So all of that stuff separately will poll well.
But then if you actually invoke the cost, which is what we heard here with all of these questions — [poll] questions about cost and deficits, people understand that this is going to be overwhelmingly expensive. We are in a huge debt already now. We’re going over a cliff in terms of fiscal sanity. Medicare is going broke — and we are adding a new entitlement?
And that’s why when you put all the elements together and you ask as a package are you opposed or in favor, you get overwhelmingly negative results. Americans are able to add up the cost and the benefits and decide in this particular proposal and package, it’s not worth it.

On developments in Afghanistan:

What is so interesting is how counter-intuitive their announcement is, the strategy is. Normally you don’t announce months in advance we’ll take x, y, z because you want the element of surprise. Here they announce the initial offensive and then Kandahar is next.
And I think it fits with the interesting strategy that McChrystal has because the objective is not the killing of the Taliban. The objective is to gain the confidence of the civilians.
If you announce in advance you will do Kandahar, the capital [of the Taliban], the prize here, you hope that the small bands of the enemy roaming around will think twice about hanging around and facing the U.S. Marines, because they will lose.
And you are doing is appealing to the less fanatical and less ideological and the less suicidal enemy who will sneak around and join the population and give up the fight and become civilians. And we aren’t against that.
The idea is once they get integrated in society, that’s OK. You don’t want a victory where you have to surrender on the battleship Missouri. What you want is to win the confidence of the population.