From Special Report with Bret Baier | Monday, March 19, 2012

On the White House’s claims that the president’s 2010 signature health care law is unpopular because of “millions” spent on opposition advertising campaigns:

That’s nonsense. It’s not the advertising. It’s the dog food. Every time anybody has a look at it or has a lick of it, they don’t like it.
And we can see this historical trajectory. It was the focus of the 2010 election. The Democrats got slaughtered. And then for a couple years it went into hibernation. It wasn’t in the news. It hadn’t been implemented, so it wasn’t a big issue.
Although Obama understands how unpopular it is. And thus he gave it only one sentence in the State of the Union Address — his signature achievement! He knows that the less people talk about it or look at it, the better it is.
So lately we have had a couple of events which have forced a look at it:
– The CBO reported last week that the cost Obama had given [for Obamacare] was only half of what it will be. It went from $900 billion to over $1.7 trillion, and that’s probably an underestimate.
– Second, we have watched over the months compulsion of the Catholic Church [regarding contraception coverage]…. A lot of people are offended, even people who don’t share the view of the Catholic Church [on contraception].
– And lastly, now of course the focus is going to be on the Supreme Court. When you get two out of every three Americans saying they want this thing [Obamacare] thrown out [by the Supreme Court], you know you have got something extremely unpopular on your hands.
And it’s got nothing to do with advertising.

On whether this primary season is the nastiest “ever seen”:

I’d say Octavius and Mark Antony was probably the worst.
In those, you lose you die. Here you lose, you go to K Street and become a lobbyist.