Pelosi: No Tax Hikes, No Deal

Let the posturing begin. On ABC’s This Week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told Martha Raddatz that she wouldn’t accept a deal to avert the fiscal cliff that doesn’t include tax increases for the wealthy. “Just to close loopholes is far too little money,” she said. “They [the GOP] have said they want it to be revenue neutral,” So, Pelosi continued, “If it’s going to bring in revenue, the president has been very clear that the higher income people have to pay their fair share.” Here we go again.

Graham: Romney ‘Keeps Digging’ GOP Into Hole

He started shaking his head before David Gregory even finished the question. And after the Meet the Press host had asked Lindsey Graham about Mitt Romney’s controversial “gifts” remark, the Republican senator from South Carolina lambasted the losing presidential candidate for continuing to hurt the party. “We’re in a big hole,” Graham said. “We’re not getting out of it by comments like that. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. He keeps digging.”

McCain: Bill Clinton To Resolve Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

As fighting escalates between Israel and a Hamas-led Gaza, Sen. John McCain criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but stressed that the United States must take action to broker a peace. “I would find someone even as high-ranking, frankly, as former president Bill Clinton to go and be the negotiator,” McCain said on Face the Nation. “We need a person of enormous prestige and influence to have these parties sit down together as an honest broker.”

Durbin: ‘Fundamentally Unfair’ to Attack Ambassador Rice

If you’re looking for clues into who the White House will choose to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, here’s a big one: Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told Face the Nation that holding U.N. “Ambassador Rice accountable for a decision by intelligence agencies—not by her, not by the White House—to withhold some part of the information [pertaining to the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya] is fundamentally unfair.” Durbin compared Rice’s potential nomination to the actual nomination of Condoleezza Rice, who was criticized by Democrats (including Durbin) for misleading the nation about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but who was defended by the very senators leading the charge against Susan Rice on Benghazi. “It was Senator McCain and Senator Graham who stood up and said, ‘Don’t hold her accountable for the intelligence that was given to her; she was simply relating what she had heard.’ Eight years later, Susan Rice is being held by Senator McCain and Senator Graham to an entirely different standard,” Durbin said. (Speaking of different standards, here’s what Durbin said during Condi’s nomination hearing: “Dr. Condoleezza Rice was in the room, at the table, when decisions were made, and she has to accept responsibility for what she said.” Hmm.)

Gutierrez ‘Shocked’ by Romney ‘Gifts’ Comment

Carlos Gutierrez was the chairman of Mitt Romney’s Hispanic Steering Committee, yet he wasted no time post-defeat to go after the GOP. On State of the Union, Gutierrez said he was “shocked” by Romney’s claim that he lost because the president gave “gifts” to Latinos, black people, and young people, and thinks that the party needs to reevaluate its priorities. “We lost the election because the Far Right of this party has taken the party to a place that it doesn’t belong,” he said.

Marty Baron: Paywall Not My Call

The Washington Post’s incoming executive editor, Marty Baron, stuck to his old-school media roots on Reliable Sources Sunday, telling Howard Kurtz that “it’s not for me to say” whether the Post will erect a paywall on its (now free) website. “That’s for people on the business side to say.” Um, what? Pretty sure you were brought in to deal with the paper’s tough financial situation.

Lieberman: Benghazi Special Committee Not Needed

Joe Lieberman doesn’t want a special committee to step on his turf. On Fox News Sunday, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee disagreed with senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham about their call for a special-committee investigation into the attack on America’s consulate in Benghazi, Libya. “I respectfully separate from my two amigos on this one,” Lieberman said. “This was a tragedy, but doesn’t rise to the level of 9/11/01. Our committees can handle this and come up with the answers.” Also, Hollywood should immediately begin production on a Three Amigos remake starring Lieberman, McCain, and Graham.