Santorum: Obama a ‘Sore Winner’
Remember Rick Santorum? Just Google him if you need a refresher. Anyway, he’s back, and he had some tough language for President Obama on This Week Sunday, criticizing the president’s executive action on gun control. “The problem with this administration,” Santorum told George Stephanopoulos, is “they’re not very gracious winners. And I always said, you know, there’s one thing worse than a sore loser, and that’s a sore winner. And the president’s a sore winner.” Well, don’t worry, Rick. The worst you’ll ever be is a sore loser.
Cruz: ‘Many’ Obama Gun Proposals Unconstitutional
Two weeks after challenging the constitutionality of Dianne Feinstein’s proposed gun registry on Fox News Sunday, Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz took to Meet the Press to assert that “many” of President Obama’s new gun control proposals are “contrary to the constitutional protections of the Second Amendment.” Cruz didn’t detail which proposals he believes are unconstitutional but was clear about one thing: his disdain for Obama’s action on gun control. “Within minutes of that horrible tragedy in Newtown, the president began trying to exploit that tragedy to push a gun control agenda that is designed to appeal to partisans,” Cruz said. “[And the new proposals] would have done zero to prevent the crime in Newtown.” Yikes.
Castro: Texas Will Be a ‘Purple,’ Then ‘Blue State’
They might have a vested interest in saying this, but Julían Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, and his twin brother, Joaquín, a new congressman representing Texas, told Face the Nation that the Lone Star State will soon become a “purple state and then a blue state.” “In a couple of presidential cycles, on election night, you’ll be announcing ‘we’re calling the 38 electoral votes of Texas for the Democratic nominee for president,’” Julían, the mayor, told Bob Schieffer with a glimmer in his eye. We can only hope that Schieffer, the 75-year-old broadcast legend, will be around to announce that election, however Texas votes.
Barrasso: Senate Won’t Even Vote on Gun Control
Your move, Harry Reid. On State of the Union Sunday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said he doubted Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, would even bring the president’s gun control proposals to vote in the nation’s second chamber. “He has six Democrats up for election in two years in states where the president received fewer than 42 percent of the votes,” Barrasso said, “and he doesn’t want his Democrats to have to choose between their own constituents and the president’s positions.” Reid, meanwhile, has a lifetime ‘B’ rating from the NRA, didn’t support extending the assault-weapons ban in 2004, and, earlier this month, remained “doubtful” a similar ban could pass the Senate this time around.
Wallace Grills Plouffe: Is Obama Going Easy on Hollywood?
Obama senior adviser David Plouffe made the talk-show rounds Sunday to advocate for the president’s new gun control proposals, including a study to examine the effects of violence in movies and videogames on society. And while Plouffe was able to get his main talking points across on Fox News Sunday—“there is a huge consensus,” he said, even among “a vast majority of Republicans,” that Congress should ban “things like assault weapons, high-capacity magazines,” institute universal background checks, and strengthen the country’s mental-health systems—he was also pressed by host Chris Wallace to explain the president’s decision to simply study media violence and not take greater action. “Why didn’t he challenge his friends in Hollywood, his supporters in Hollywood, [to] clean up your act and knock it off?” Wallace asked of the president.
Plouffe shifted both physically and verbally, offering up only the defense that the study is “really important” and that Obama “is not going easy” on his Hollywood supporters. But Wallace got the last word, asking: “Do you need a study to know that … [when] people’s heads are exploding, that’s bad?”
Longoria: Immigration Is ‘a Broken System’
Sure, she’s planning the Latino inaugural and serving as co-chair of President Obama’s Inauguration Committee, but Eva Longoria still had time to stop by This Week to talk about immigration reform. “People say, ‘Oh, get in the back of the line,’ [but] people don’t realize there’s a hundred lines to get into,” said Longoria of the immigration process. “It’s a very broken system.” Perhaps that’s why Longoria is helping plan the president’s inauguration: comprehensive immigration reform is a top priority this term, as both parties look to capitalize on last election’s historic Latino vote.