The Occasional Observer

Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, 2008 candidate:

[A change in Egypt's leadership] would be best undertaken if President Mubarak were to step out of the way or lead the transition...I don't know that I would say to the president, 'You should call for Mubarak's resignation.' That, I think, flies in the face of a long history of friendship between he and our country and our friends.... I think that [the Obama administration] got off to a rocky start. I think some of the statements early on were misguided. But I think they corrected and they said they want to see transition, I think that's right," he told me. (Source: Interview Jan. 31, ABC's Good Morning America.)


Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, 2008 candidate:

The overall consensus [in Israel] is two-fold. First, real shock and surprise down to the average on the street Israeli citizen at how quickly the Obama administration abandoned a 30-year ally and a long standing friend to peace and stability-- President Mubarak. I don't think anybody is trying to defend everything that he did as President, but they would have liked to have seen at least an acknowledgment that he's been a friend for all these years. So the concern is that if the U.S. will so quickly turn on that friend, how quickly will it turn on its other friends?... The second concern is that this could have cascading effects across the Middle East. (Source: Interview Feb. 1 on Fox and Friends via ThinkProgress.)


Tim Pawlenty, former Minnesota governor:

I think his time is going to come to an end. It should come to an end. But as that vacuum gets filled, we want to do all we can to make sure it gets filled by institutions and people and leaders that share our principles... We're at a precipice now where there's going to be change, and the infrastructure--the political infrastructure of the country--isn't well prepared for the change. And it's in part because we allowed this vacuum to materialize underneath Mubarak. (Source: Interview with reporters Jan. 31, as reported by the Des Moines Register.)


Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker:

The United States should try to facilitate the movement to a system that promotes democracy, but we shouldn't kid ourselves. We do not want to see Egypt go the way of Iran and have a pro-Western ally replaced by a radical Islamist organization that is clearly dangerous to our future and could cause enormous instability in the region. (Source: Interview Jan. 31 on Fox's Sean Hannity Show)


Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania Senator:

Here we have a regime that has actually been quite friendly to the United States, cooperates with the United States. And there seems to be more encouragement [from the State Department] for the protesters on the streets of Egypt than there was for the protesters in the streets of Iran [during the Green revolution.] And that's a bit puzzling to me... This is a hard case... If you take Iran from 1979, we had a dictator there in Iran, the Shah in Iran, who was a friend of the United States... but we abandoned him and what we got in exchange was... a radical Islamic regime. That happening in Egypt would have a profound effect on the Middle East. (Source: Interview Jan. 28 on Fox Business)