From Fox’s Special Report with Bret Baier Thursday, January 19, 2012

On the announcement yesterday that a recount in Iowa shows Rick Santorum to have won the Iowa Caucuses by 34 votes:

If the state Republican officials announce that the ballots are missing [in eight precincts] and we will never have them or know the outcome, then you can’t have a concession and you can’t have a winner or loser. What you have is what we had at the beginning, essentially a tie. I think it alters nothing….

On Newt Gingrich’s position in South Carolina:

I think the endorsement by Perry was important. You would think from numbers it wouldn’t be. Perry is down to about four percent…. Perry supporters’ second choice is evenly split among Santorum and Gingrich and Romney. So it would have no effect mathematically on Gingrich-Romney race.
Second, the Gingrich numbers, as we saw in the polls, are rising rapidly at the same time… the Perry numbers were collapsing, which would imply that a lot of the Gingrich numbers — the new additional supporters — were already coming out of Perry supporters. So in terms of the pure numbers it doesn’t look important.
[But] when a candidate is rising — Gingrich is rising — and then you get a sudden endorsement of a competitor, I think it does have an effect…

On Rick Perry’s withdrawal from the primary race:

He showed why it’s important to actually start out in the minor leagues. Normally a candidate will spend six months on the hustings — before the debates and before he goes national — where he works out all the kinks and develops a speech and knows how to answer stuff. And Perry didn’t. He started major league level in the all-star game and had trouble at the beginning.
But I think by getting out of the way he did now — before he would have ended up last in the state that he really ought to do well in [South Carolina] — he saved himself, as well as the way he performed in the last debate and the last month. He was a lot stronger. He had become a laughing stock after the “oops” moment he had, but I think he redeemed himself. And though he’s slightly diminished, I think he returns home with his dignity restored, and he can be — and he will be — I think, a candidate again in the future.