panetta view of defense size and scope. he wants to cut it below. secretary panetta says we are destroying the defense department if we move forward with sequestration. and you are picking someone that the iranians applaud and israel is under scrutiny and in the cross hairs of history like any other time i have seen and we are about to nominate a person for secretary of defense who tells israel you should negotiate directly with hamas? a group of people who tried to kill israeli children every day by lobbing rockets. makes no sense to me. shannon: and you have tough concerns and tough questions about the nominees and others probably coming up as well. i know that you are deferensial to the president in many cases when justices sotomayor and kagan were up for nomination you did vote for them. i thought they were qualified. shannon: when do you draw the line? when the signal you are sending to the secretary of defense nominee to the iranians that we are not really serious about s
base, he is no longer he is liberated from the need to accommodate and be deferensial to the democratic majority to pass the huge pieces of legislation. what is he going to be like? i think you are seeing the seeds of him moving to the center on trade and energy and i think you will certainly see it on the tax cuts. how much trouble is this president in politically? and if he were to follow the conventional wisdom and pull a clinton like that president did after the 94 defeat at the hands of newt gingrich, what would that mean? what would he have to do? that is a good question. people talk as if he can decide to pivot and he pivots and magically he is moderate and popular again. it is not that ease. a lot of legislation that he passed that he is not going repudiate and that is