The Morning Roundup

Fox News's "Fox and Friends"

Washington Examiner's Bill Sammon, on McCain's VP choices: "Huckabee brings pluses and minuses to the equation. He's a very likeable, a great debater kind-of-a-guy. But he also has the potential as we saw last week...sometimes his humor becomes a problem as well. So I'm not sure I'd put Huckabee at the top of the list. ... Rob Portman is a straight arrow, sort of a boy scout kind of a guy, not controversial. He also could help carry Ohio. Ohio is a crucial swing state. Whereas Charlie Crist...I think Barack Obama is already going to lose Florida...so why bother with that? Why not go for Ohio, which is much more important to McCain?"

Sammon on Dem veepstakes: "I don't think Barack Obama wants Hillary Clinton as his running mate, but keep in mind the distinct possiblity that she could force her way onto the ticket. ... Clearly she's trying for some sort of consolation prize because it doesn't look like she's going to get the presidency."

Drudge Report co-editor Andrew Breitbart, on Gov. Schwarzenegger: "He ran as a Republican, and ever since the fate of the GOP went downhill he's been running as a liberal Democrat. The most infuriating thing from my standpoint as a conservative Republican is this slavish embrace of global warming. That to me is the biggest nightmare." On Obama: "We are going to be talking about Michelle Obama a lot over the next six months. The thing is Barack Obama got an 'A' in the course 'How to run in 2008.' Talking about God, talking about patriotism. In the same course, I believe that Michelle Obama got a 'C.'"

MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

Dem consultant Bob Shrum, on Ted Kennedy: "It was a real scare the other day. But he's in the hospital, he's sitting up, he watched '60 Minutes' last night...And they're just waiting for the results of the tests." On McCain: "The real problem for McCain is how does he pass the threshold on the economy...on healthcare...on these domestic issues, where the Republican Party brand, frankly, has been scarred by George W. Bush, and where McCain largely agrees with Bush." On McCain and appeasement: "I have no doubt that the last thing in the world -- on a day when he gave a speech trying to separate himself from George Bush -- that he wanted was to be married to George Bush on this issue."

Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson, on Clinton exiting the race this week: "Absolutely not. There is zero percent chance of that. ... She is going to continue until we have a nominee. We still believe that will be Senator Clinton. ... It is completely premature for Senator Obama to be calling himself the Democratic nominee. Declaring 'mission accomplished' does not make it so. There is no standard under which Senator Obama will secure the requisite number of delegates to obtain the nomination Tuesday night. And the fact that he is out taking victory laps prematurely I think sends a terrible signal to the voters in upcoming states."

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod: "No one is taking a victory lap, but we believe that as of tomorrow there is a very good chance that we will have achieved a majority of the pledged delegates, and that will be a milestone in this race." On concern of possible big loss in Kentucky coming after West Virginia 40-point loss: "We've won landslides. We've lost by some margin in other states. Give Senator Clinton credit. She's a formidable opponent. But if you look at some of the swing states around the country -- the Colorados, the Iowas, the Wisconsins -- we're doing very very well in those states. We believe we're going to expand the playing field to other states as well. We won Virginia by a landslide."

ABC's "Good Morning America"

Interview with Barack Obama: "We will have won the majority of delegates that come from people voting in primaries, people voting in caucuses. The voters will have given us a majority. Our campaign is pretty superstitious. We are big believers in not counting those chickens before they're hatched...Senator Clinton is running a vigorous campaign."

On the Tennessee GOP's ad criticizing Michelle Obama: "If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because that I find unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family...for them to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class and I think most of the American people would think that as well."

Michelle Obama, denying Bob Novak's claim that she does not want Clinton on the ticket: "I think the world of Senator Clinton. There's no way that I would say absolutely not to one of the most successful, and powerful, and groundbreaking women on this planet."

Watch the video here

NBC's "Today"

In an interview in Egypt, President Bush was asked whether he was referring to Obama in his speech at the Knesset: "My policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has. People need to read the speech. What I said was we need to take the words of people seriously. And when a leader of Iran says they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously, and if you don't take them seriously it harkens back to a day when we didn't take other words seriously. It was fitting that I talked about not taking the words of Adolf Hitler seriously."

Tim Russert: "The huge crowd in Oregon, over 75,000 for Barack Obama, indicates the kind of momentum his campaign has. On Tuesday night, he will win a majority of the elected delegates available and go to Iowa and proclaim victory. Hillary Clinton has throttled down considerably, she's focusing all her attention on John McCain and the national media and doesn't mention Barack Obama."

On McCain's strategy: "He realizes the Republican brand as it's being labeled is a problem for him and so he has tread this fine line: be a Republican, utilize George Bush to raise money but try to carve out this maverick, independent image which is very difficult because in order to win the primary he had to embrace many of those traditional Republican traditions."

(Greg Bobrinskoy contributed to Morning Roundup)



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