Sunday Sound: Heard on 'This Week'

ABC News

Below are some of the notable comments made Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Guests included Obama Campaign Senior Adviser, Robert Gibbs; Romney Campaign Senior Adviser, Ed Gillespie; Fox News Anchor and author of "Killing Kennedy," Bill O'Reilly; Democratic strategist, James Carville; Republican strategist, Mary Matalin ; Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman ; Wall Street Journal Columnist, Peggy Noonan; and ABC News senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl.

HEADLINERS

1. Gibbs weighs in on Romney's debate performance

GIBBS: Governor Romney had a masterful theatrical performance just this past week, but the underpinnings and foundations of that performance were fundamentally dishonest.

2. Gibbs disagrees with Stephanie Cutter on the Obama campaign's view of Romney's tax cuts

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UM: President Obama continues to distort Mitt Romney's economic plan. The latest - not telling the truth about Mitt Romney's tax plan. The AP says doesn't add up. ABC News, mostly fiction. Even the Obama campaign admitted it wasn't true.

[STEPHANIE CUTTER]: Well, OK, stipulated, it won't be near $5 trillion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: So does the campaign now accept that the cuts will be less than $5 trillion?

GIBBS: No, absolutely not. If you're going to reduce the Bush tax rates by 20 percent, and the estate tax, and the AMT, change the corporate rate, and a whole host of other changes, that adds up to a reduction in revenue, $4.8 trillion.

3. Gibbs claims Romney's budget plan lacks detail

GIBBS: Look, the only thing he outlined that he would cut in the budget is Big Bird. He's taken the battle straight to Sesame Street, and let Wall Street run hog wild.

4. Gibbs says Biden's "buried" middle class remark wasn't a gaffe

GIBBS: Well, I don't think that was a gaffe, George, because I think what the vice president was talking about is what he's talked about every day, which is a series of eight years of horrifically bad economic decisions-

5. Gillespie criticizes the Obama campaign's response to Wednesday's debate

GILLESPIE: The Obama campaign, they remind me a little bit of a 7-year-old losing a checker game, and then instead of being frustrated at the outcome, they sweep the board off the table.

6. Gillespie believes Big Bird can still be successful

GILLESPIE: Big Bird, I can tell you, as the father of three children, grown now, but any father who has gone to a toy store knows that Big Bird is a pretty commercially successful entity… Big Bird would be pretty successful, I suspect, without a government federal subsidy and all that debt.

7. Gillespie comments on 'damning' jobs report numbers

GILLESPIE: George, the numbers themselves are very damning. When you look at it, we had

fewer jobs created in September than were created in August, fewer jobs created in August than were created in July.

ROUNDTABLE

8. Karl says the debate created a new race

KARL: This is it's a new race after that debate. Imagine if Romney had come in and had a terrible performance, you have what happened before and then you had the jobs number on Friday, it would have effectively been over.

9. Carville says Obama didn't want to be at the debate

CARVILLE: I said I didn't want to come to this conclusion but sitting watching I have to come to it: he just didn't want to be there.

10. Krugman doesn't think press can handle 'untruths'

KRUGMAN: The press just doesn't know how to handle flat out untruths… I just think that pre-existing condition thing was a defining moment. It was saying this guy believes not only that he can say something that isn't true but something that his own campaign has admitted isn't true. And he can say it in front of 70 million people. That's amazing.

11. Matalin blasts Obama on his 'game'

MATALIN: Can I state the obvious here since we all have theories, the obvious is he didn't bring his game because he doesn't have a game.