Sunday Sound: Heard on the ‘This Week’ Roundtable
Email
ABC News
Below are some of the notable comments made by the Powerhouse Roundtable Sunday on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” Roundtable guests included ABC News’ George Will; Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren; PBS’ “Washington Week” moderator and managing editor Gwen Ifill; University of California, Berkeley professor and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich; and ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
POWERHOUSE ROUNDTABLE
Will says fiscal cliff deal will be remembered as the start of the decline of liberalism
WILL: In this sense, I think people will look back on this deal as where liberalism passed an apogee and went into decline for the following reason…172 House Democrats voted to make the Bush rates permanent for all but 0.5 percent of American taxpayers.
Van Susteren says Obama had to ‘outsource’ negotiating to Biden
VAN SUSTEREN: But how much negotiating is he doing? Last week, he had to outsource it to Vice President Biden, because he doesn’t have the relationships, he hasn’t spent the years, whether as president or a senator, developing the relationships so he can negotiate.
Will calls Hagel an ‘odd pick’ but thinks he will be confirmed as Secretary of Defense
WILL: It is an odd pick, first of all, because if…a Democrat picks a Republican, he ought to be someone who thinks like Republicans and is liked by Republicans, and neither of those are true in this case. Furthermore, he doesn’t think the way the president thinks or at least the way the president talks about Iran and sanctions and negotiating with Hamas and all the rest, and gays in the military, all that stuff. All that said…I think he should be confirmed and will be.
Reich predicts Hagel will be confirmed
REICH: At the end of the day, he’ll get through. You know, I can’t imagine a Republican Senate, the Republican senators rejecting a Republican.
Ifill and Van Susteren sound off on gun violence
VAN SUSTEREN: We should take a look a little bit more at ourselves, from top to bottom. I mean, we have so much violence surrounding us that we think is OK….Even the president of the United States sends rappers to the White House who say horrible things. Nobody’s scandalized.
IFILL: I’m trying to figure out whether any rappers have resulted in the deaths of schoolchildren. I don’t think so.
Reich says NRA’s strategy relies on the ‘Attention Deficit Disorder’ of the country
REICH: The NRA’s — the NRA’s technique in the past has been to really rely on the attention deficit disorder of America, basically lay low until attention is no longer placed on this.
Karl predicts a big year for Biden in 2013 that may impact his 2016 chances
KARL: I think this is going to be a big year for Biden, because if the president’s going to get anything accomplished with Congress, it’s clear that he’s going to need Biden to work directly with them. So I look for Biden and I wonder if it’s either going to make or break his prospects for 2016.
Like “This Week” on Facebook here. You can also follow the show on Twitter here.
Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/Politics and a different take on the news at OTUSNews.com.
Sen. Chuck Hagel's Defense Nomination Draws Criticism 
Congress Makes President Obama's Reelection Official 
On guns, the entire Roundtable totally missed the point and the truth.
We just need to be honest and get used to it and get over it. Newtown and other victims of high-killing-capacity weapons with large-magazines are acceptable losses, acceptable deaths, the price we pay for the wonderfulness of the Second Amendment.
LaPierre should personally present the parents and spouses and surviving family with NRA Second Amendment flags and Medals of Honor for solemnly laying such costly sacrifice on the sacred altar of the Second Amendment.
We KNOW FOR A FACT that with the easy and widespread, un-infringed availability of Busmasters, etc. –GUARANTEED AND REQUIRED by the Second Amendment– that such massacres are permanently in our future, they are unavoidable. Even if we have armed guards and teachers in schools.
We KNOW that with endless guns & ammo and endless crazy, careless and unlucky people (and just evil, malicious ones) that there is no way to keep them apart. We KNOW that with such endless guns that gun laws are worthless and powerless to stop the quick and easy mass murder.
That’s just the way it is and the way it must be.
Even if somebody with a cc handgun shows up the Bushmaster wins the body count.
So get over it and move along, please.
And, please, let’s properly honor these victims, for they are casualties in our necessary, perpetual war against The American Tyrant. They are honored sacrifices. They are worth it
God Bless America! And just be honest. Like this guy from Texas: “Clearly what happened in Connecticut was a tragedy. Still, by affording the Second Amendment protection, we understand events like these will happen.”
Posted by: Shelama | January 6, 2013, 12:58 pm 12:58 pm
REICH is right: “The NRA’s — the NRA’s technique in the past has been to really rely on the attention deficit disorder of America, basically lay low until attention is no longer placed on this.”
But so is the NRA
Not too much longer and Newtown will be no more vivid than Aurora, or Columbine or Austin, TX 1966.
And that will be true for all of the mass-murder massacres by large-capacity weapons that we KNOW are in our future, ad inifinitum, ad nauseum.
We are literally placing child sacrifices onto the sacred altar of the Second Amendment and honesty demands that we acknowledge it and, since we KNOW it is unavoidable, acknowledge that it is an acceptable cost, that they are acceptable deaths. It’s the price we pay. It’s the price we MUST pay. The alternative is The American Tyrant.
Posted by: Shelama | January 6, 2013, 2:02 pm 2:02 pm
McVeigh used a bomb and killed nearly 200 people. If it weren’t for the gun in his car he never would have been apprehended.
Posted by: lillian | January 6, 2013, 2:23 pm 2:23 pm
yay Greta. Have her back, she makes more sense than any of them put together
Posted by: jaye | January 6, 2013, 2:30 pm 2:30 pm
The US government sent me to infantry school, taught he how to kill, then sent me into combat. So now I am in danger of losing my right to own a weapon? Left wing liberals will always attack the consitution; it’s simply their nature.
Posted by: USArmyAirborne | January 6, 2013, 7:20 pm 7:20 pm
Posted by: Shelama | January 6, 2013, 2:02 pm
So you think there should be a ‘cooling off period’ when buying a gun, because of the potential that the buyer, without any supporting evidence, may be impassioned about something -yet we should deliberately pass legislation affecting millions of people BECAUSE passions are high?
If an individual can be denied their rights because they MAY be upset about something (A right delayed is a right denied -Martin Luther King Jr.), then why on earth would anyone propose passing unconstitutional legislation BECAUSE public emotions are high and fleeting?
Posted by: Dalmation | January 7, 2013, 11:32 am 11:32 am