I like [ Rick] Santorum personally and respect him, but you wouldn't say that he was really that strong of an opponent. At the end of the day it wasn't like [Ronald] Reagan running against [George] Bush, or [George W.] Bush against [John] McCain, even. It's sort of surprising that Romney had as much trouble as he did, and I think it shows a weakness in appeal to those voters.

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.

In any case, open-seat presidential elections like 2008 just are different in character from incumbent reelects, and I think that's the most important thing about this election - is that once there's an incumbent running for reelection, most of the debate is about, "Has he [Barack Obama] done a good job?" Most of the judgment is, "Do you want to keep him or do you want to replace him?" Now, the opponent has to also be acceptable and has to make his own case.

At the end of the day,[Mitt] Romney was pro-life, but [Rick] Santorum was more fervently pro-life, and had been for longer. They're all going to repeal Obamacare, but Romney has once endorsed something like it. In the old days, there really were differences on fundamental issues, even on foreign policy, [for which] [Newt] Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum were pretty similar.

I think [Donald Trump] will do something on immigration.

I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [...] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.

White women are a problem, that's, you know - we all live with that.