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| The Right To Bear Arms | DR. MCLAUGHLIN: What do you think, Eleanor?
MS. CLIFT: Reasonable gun restrictions are a good idea, and they're not unconstitutional.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: He wants all 400 (thousand).
MS. CLIFT: Yeah, but the Democratic Congress is not going to take on this issue because the NRA is too powerful, and they've got too many other things to do. So it's not going anywhere, regardless.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: You mean, they're craven. The Democrats are craven.
MS. CLIFT: I didn't say they're craven. They're politicians.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: They control both houses of Congress, and they're so craven they will not say this is unconstitutional.
MS. CLIFT: There are no votes to overturn NRA rules.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Now that we know the Democrats are craven.
MS. CROWLEY: I will say that the Democrats are craven, yeah. (Laughs.) Look, there are two things going on. First, liberals like Lautenberg will take any opportunity to put the Second Amendment in a vise. And number two, you've really got to pay closer attention to who is on these watch lists, these terrorist watch lists, and get these erroneous names weeded out and get it narrowed down to actual terrorist suspects.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Quickly. We're almost out of time.
MR. PAGE: This is true, but it's easy to apply to be taken off the watch list. The big problem is people who have the same names as somebody who legitimately is on the list. And it's not that big of an inconvenience to go and apply -- get approved to go buy a gun and go buy your gun, just like you would to board an airplane.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: I think it's worthy of constitutional challenge and probably it's unconstitutional.
| | I think it's worthy of constitutional challenge and probably it's unconstitutional. | -John McLaughlin | 
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| Another One Bites the Dust? | Question: Who outed the governor, Mark Sanford? I ask you. You've been very forceful on this show. What's your answer to that? (Laughter.)
MR. PAGE: Maybe the same person who outed Fanne Foxe and Wilbur Mills. (Laughs.
) This was not the first American pol to fall to an Argentine lover here, you know. But, no, I know newspaper reporters had something to do with it. I think some investigative work went on when Sanford disappeared.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: You think it's as innocent as that?
MR. PAGE: Well, I don't know who their source was as far as, you know, originally tipping them off. But it is --
MS. CLIFT: I suspect the e-mails. I suspect the e-mails got out. He used the official South Carolina state website or his office website. And I think you also have a pretty angry wife here in the picture, and they apparently had been separated for a period of time. I guess she asked him to move out of the house.
But I must say, as a wise talk show woman, I feel some empathy for him. I mean, that press conference was not --
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Are you saying more than you're saying?
MS. CLIFT: No, I'm saying that press conference was not your usual scripted affair where you take responsibility but you don't really take responsibility, and the wife standing stoically by the side. This guy was practically -- he was coming apart. He was fighting back tears. It was not a press conference that --
MR. LOWRY: That's Sanford. He's a very forthright guy and he's --
MS. CLIFT: -- you would have advised him to have.
MR. LOWRY: Yeah.
MS. CLIFT: And it tells me that if he can't manage an affair and manage the state of South Carolina, he has no business being a presidential candidate. So bye-bye, Mr. Sanford.
| | If he can't manage an affair and manage the state of South Carolina, he has no business being a presidential candidate. So bye-bye, Mr. Sanford.
| -Eleanor Clift |
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| A Real Realignment | DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, he'll settle for about 16 percent.
Okay, let's hear what Newt Gingrich has to say about this.
FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: (From videotape.) This is a big-spending, big-government, big-politician, big-bureaucracy administration.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Does that sum it up?
MR. LOWRY: Yeah. A couple more "bigs" might have been even better.
MS. CROWLEY: (Laughs.) Right on.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: So you hear what he said.
MR. LOWRY: Going to what Clarence was saying, his numbers among independents are evening out. It's getting close to 50-50 approval. So he's not energizing that center any more, necessarily.
MR. PAGE: Well, you know why? Because the price tag is coming out. That was inevitable.
MR. LOWRY: Exactly.
MR. PAGE: Whatever you've got to pay for, people are going to say, "Wait a minute. I don't want to pay for it. I want it all free."
MR. LOWRY: And that's why he didn't pay for any of this.
MR. PAGE: But, you know, you've still got to sell it --
MR. LOWRY: That's why he didn't pay for a dime.
MR. PAGE: -- just like Franklin Roosevelt had to sell Social Security and these programs that we now take for granted today.
MR. LOWRY: But this is why --
MR. PAGE: And that's what a realignment is all about.
| | Whatever you've got to pay for, people are going to say, "Wait a minute. I don't want to pay for it. I want it all free." | -Clarence Page |
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| Lautenberg's List | DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Is Frank Lautenberg's suggestion, his prescription, unconstitutional on its face?
MR. LOWRY: No, not on its face. It is constitutionally problematic because you have a constitutional right to buy a gun in a way you don't have a constitutional right necessarily to board a plane.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Exactly.
MR. LOWRY: But I think there'll be a way to work this out.
| | It is constitutionally problematic because you have a constitutional right to buy a gun in a way you don't have a constitutional right necessarily to board a plane. | -Rich Lowry |
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| The Economy--Here Today Gone Tomorrow? |
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: Question: Is Obama, as McCain states, mortgaging the future in order to deal with the present economic crisis? Monica.
MS. CROWLEY: Softball question. Thanks for the puff ball, John. (Laughter.)
Yes. I mean, the litany of things that you laid out, with massive government intervention into all of these sectors and the huge expansion of the federal government here with the banks, the auto industry and so on.
What you're seeing now in the polls -- and I don't think you saw this in the November election; you didn't see a full-on realignment. And now, with all of this spending and all of this intervention, the voters that will make the difference one way or the other are independents. And what you're seeing now among independent voters is a heck of a lot of concern about the explosion of the national deficit as well as the national debt. They're not willing to go down this path. And even you see some pulling back now on support of health care reform because the spending is just too out of control.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: So the independents are bloating in number; they're not receding. That sounds like a dealignment. MS. CROWLEY: Well, it -- well, no, I'm not sure, because you don't see a change in percentages per se. But when you ask about a permanent majority, a permanent Democratic majority, to the extent that that's what we're looking at in a realignment, that is not the case.
DR. MCLAUGHLIN: I think you --
MS. CROWLEY: But the administration is certainly trying to create that through --
| | What you're seeing now among independent voters is a heck of a lot of concern about the explosion of the national deficit as well as the national debt. | -Monica Crowley |
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