Ari Fleischer

Anytime James Carville, Paul Begala and David Axelrod hold hands and jump for joy, it's worth pondering how to turn their joy into tears.

When President George W. Bush cut taxes, he cut them for everyone.

Make no mistake, if the payroll-tax cut is extended, it will become permanent. Social Security will become another welfare program as the tie between what someone pays and what they receive gets broken.

My advice to the tea party freshmen: Slow the galloping horses to a trot. Big government was built over decades; it can't be dismantled in a year, especially when Democrats control the White House.

If Mr. Obama wants to get things done, he must recognize that in Washington only the president has the power to make the first big move.

After two years of fighting, government shutdowns and little to no agreement on anything except welfare reform in 1996, President Clinton was re-elected and decided it was time for compromise.

Having served as the majority spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee after Republicans took the House in 1994, I've seen the promise and the peril of divided government before.

The tea party movement and its passion arose in response to trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and out of a sense that Washington is in need of dire fiscal reform.

The 2000s were marked by terrorism and a bipartisan desire to fight it.

Today, grass-roots Republicans want to drink a bottle of 2010 small-government wine, but our candidates were bottled in another era, before the tea party's ideas took root.

The reason Gov. Romney passed Romneycare as governor of Massachusetts in 2006 was because many Republicans viewed health care reform, mandates and all, as a way to inoculate against Democratic charges that Republicans didn't care about people who lacked health insurance.

But instead, Democrats are so bent on seeing Republicans as a bunch of angry, right wing, intolerant, unreliable extremists that they have a track record of missing the mood of the country, especially the sentiment of people who don't wake up to 'The New York Times.'

If Democrats were good at thinking like Republicans, they would see the light and stop being Democrats.

I get a kick out of Democrats thinking they know how handicap a GOP race.

A safety net for the poor indeed requires some level of income redistribution.

It's time to create an Economic Growth Code whose purpose is to fix and grow the economy, not redistribute massive amounts of wealth.

Everyone now has a sacred cow in the tax code. For my money, the most sacred thing of all is our country and its growth, but the sacred cows have turned into a pack of wolves.

Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country.

Because what I say from that podium has got to be accurate, and I'm the only one who's going to be held liable if it's not accurate.

I don't expect the press to say thank you for the efforts that I make.

The press secretary who starts to narrow down or close the president's options because he answers delicate negotiating questions no longer serves the president.

The president welcomes peaceful protests - it is a time-honored tradition. The president agrees violence is not the answer in Iraq, and that's why he hopes Saddam Hussein will disarm.

Most of the State of the Union will not be about Iraq. Most of the State of the Union will be about improving America's economy and providing greater access to health care for millions of American people, including senior citizens.

The greatest threat to the security of the people of North Korea comes from the government of North Korea.

There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest.