I do think what the Tea Party also had was Obamacare and the unpopularity of that, at least at the time. And so whether there is something that is equally unpopular and equally galvanizing that is almost self-destructive from the administration, that's another factor that we will wait and see.

President [John F.] Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs, said to Turner Catledge of The New York Times: I wish you had written more, I wish you had investigated more, because it might have saved the country of the cataclysm of the Bay of Pigs.

It doesn't have to be the same line that we have had for the last 40 years, because that clearly isn't working on any level. But you have got to have a pretty clear line on this crucial issue.

There is always strength in numbers

I think that the people that are publicly on Hillary Clinton's short list all are very congenial people. They're not people with personality or Captain Queeg problems.

I do think, over the last years, a lot of Republicans have decided it's not working, what the party believed in, free trade, global capitalism, open borders.

It's interesting how identity politics and Ann Coulter-style tactics have now blossomed. But they were always there in CPAC.