'This Week' Extra: The Roundtable's Post-Show Thoughts

June, 10, 2012— -- intro: Following the "This Week" roundtable Sunday, we asked our roundtable participants to expand on their discussion. Here are their views.

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title: Ann Coulter: Democratic Hypocrisy on President Obama's 'Kill List'

text: Van Jones seems to be the only Democrat striving for a modicum of consistency by raising questions about President Obama's "kill list" for terrorists living in foreign countries. For six years, we had to listen to liberals wail about terrorists being held by the Bush administration at Guantanamo and various "rendition" sites around the world. They demanded that the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, be tried in the same courthouse where Martha Stewart was tried.

President Obama has gotten around the problem of holding suspected terrorists without a trial by killing them without a trial. I'm not sure I have a problem with this, but every single Democrat is a raging, lying hypocrite for not screaming from the rooftops, staging citizens' arrests of government officials, shutting down the White House with protests and convening impeachment hearings for Obama over his self-designated role as judge, jury and executioner of presumed terrorists – including American citizens.

Ann Coulter is a conservative commentator and best-selling author, most recently of "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America."

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title: Ed Rendell: Time to Tell the Truth to Political Bases

text: As I travel from city to city for my new book, "A Nation of Wusses," I am finding a very real hunger for Washington to start acting in the best interest of the country and get things done. People are fed up with rampant partisanship and political posturing on both sides. They are fed up with elected officials who tell them only what they think they want to hear and who never tell them the truth because they believe that "they can't handle the truth."

This strong feeling gives me hope that we can really get things done in the short window of time immediately after this fall's election. To do this it will take effective leadership by the winner of the presidential election and both sides of Congress having the courage to tell the truth to their respective political bases.

Democrats will have to tell seniors that we cannot eliminate the deficit without spending cuts – and that means substantial reform to Medicare and Medicaid. Likewise, Republicans are going to have to man up and tell Grover Norquist and the no-tax far right that there is no way to achieve this goal without raising revenue – and that means serious tax reform, eliminating loopholes and letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the top two percent. They should assure them that this would not cause job losses by explaining that when Bill Clinton did exactly that in 1993, 23 million jobs were created in the next six years.

If we join together and do this as patriotic "non-wusses," the American people will appreciate the honesty and support the effort, and America can return to greatness.

Ed Rendell is a former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, and the author of the new book, "A Nation of Wusses: How America's Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great."