To bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

I think you can not be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

If you're going to go increase taxes on small businesses, you're going to slow down the extent to which we're able to reduce unemployment. So I think it's a serious mistake; the wrong time to raise taxes.

I did my 40 years in Washington, 40-plus, and it's time to pause and reflect and think about what I've seen and done.

I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.

After 9/11 we were prepared to use military force. We were prepared to go after not only the terrorists, but those who sponsor terror and provide sanctuary and safe harbor for them. We were prepared to use our intelligence assets the way we would against an enemy that threatened the United States itself, to put in place, for example, things like the Terror Surveillance Program and to have a robust interrogation program on detainees. Those are the acts you take when you feel you're at war and that the very existence of the nation is threatened.

We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.