From Friday night’s Fox News All-Stars.
On Thursday night’s Republican debate:
I was struck by the fact that this was the third debate where Perry had not done well. And I think there was one question on Pakistan — it wasn’t an easy question, but the Perry answer was simply incoherent. It was not that he got it wrong — there wasn’t an easy or good answer. It seems as if he didn’t quite know how to think about the question about nuclear weapons in Pakistan. …
I think he did hurt himself and I think there was an obvious admission of it in the statement he made where he said we don’t want the slickest debater. Obviously he isn’t.
On whether the Republicans’ arguments over illegal immigration will hurt them in the general election with Hispanics:
I think it is rather easy — once you get out of the internal debates among Republicans — on immigration to make the case which I think is sort of the consensus case among Republicans that, yes, we welcome legal immigrants, we are a country of legal immigrants. We want people to enter legally, and that is that we want to discourage illegal immigration — the basic unfairness of having legal immigrants waiting all around the world while illegal immigrants are coming in.
And also in saying if you can demonstrate that we can actually shut the border and end illegal immigration effectively — you are not going to end it entirely but turn a river into a trickle — then people will be open to all kinds of accommodations for people already here.
That is an easy case to make.
On the talk of Chris Christie getting into the race:
Godot … will get in before Christie.
Godot in ’12.
On Friday’s Solyndra hearing on Capitol Hill:
Well, the Fifth Amendment is one of the glories of our constitution. But unfortunately, when you take it you look guilty.
On the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations:
The issue is not Palestinian statehood. It’s whether there is statehood with peace or without peace. Everybody in America – there’s a consensus in America, a consensus in Israel, about a Palestinian state. The Israelis have offered a Palestinian state with incredibly generous terms and been rejected.
The statement of the Israeli prime minister today is absolutely correct. Israel seeks peace with a Palestinian state, and the Palestinians seek a state without peace. That’s the point of the U.N. bid. A statehood within peace negotiations has been America’s policy for at least 18 years, and this is a rejection of that, a tearing up of Oslo, and [an] undermining of all peace negotiations.