From Friday night’s Fox News All-Stars.
On the Democrats calling off any legislative consideration of the Bush tax cuts before the election:
It gives the Republicans a second [campaign] issue here.
The original issue, of course, was [the] ideological issue of economic philosophy. Is it a good idea to raise anyone’s taxes in the middle of a recession?
But now they’ve added a second issue. … The Democrats have [had] control of the House and the Senate and the presidency for 20 months and they are unable to tell the country what the rates of taxation are going to be in three months, on January 1. It isn’t only income tax. It’s going to be capital gains, it’s going to be dividends, it’s going to be estate tax.
And this is at a time when we all know that one of the reasons why business, large and small, is sitting on $3 trillion of cash and not investing and not spending and not hiring is because of uncertainty. And the largest uncertainty is what‘s going to be the cost to any business of taxes. And they can’t even answer that.
And the reason it’s a difficult issue for any Democrat is the Democrats are the ones who spent a year and a half telling us how government has a role in controlling health care, regulating the financial industry, and spending a trillion dollars of stimulus, but it can’t even tell you what our taxes are going to be on January 1.
On Stephen Colbert’s congressional testimony:
You invite a clown in to speak before a committee of Congress and you should expect clownishness.
On Bob Woodward’s new book:
I think the real story here is not what he said about absorbing another 9/11 attack or insults of one member of the circle against another. It’s the ambivalence he portrays in private about the war he himself escalated.
It’s really questionable how a commander-in-chief can increase the number of troops and put them in harm’s way in a war he seems only to want an exit.