Ari Fleischer

After two years of fighting, government shutdowns and little to no agreement on anything except welfare reform in 1996, President Clinton was re-elected and decided it was time for compromise.

Today, grass-roots Republicans want to drink a bottle of 2010 small-government wine, but our candidates were bottled in another era, before the tea party's ideas took root.

The president welcomes peaceful protests - it is a time-honored tradition. The president agrees violence is not the answer in Iraq, and that's why he hopes Saddam Hussein will disarm.

But instead, Democrats are so bent on seeing Republicans as a bunch of angry, right wing, intolerant, unreliable extremists that they have a track record of missing the mood of the country, especially the sentiment of people who don't wake up to 'The New York Times.'

I favor the abolition of all Social Security, Medicare and estate taxes. In their place, we should create a simple income tax system that has no deductions or credits at all.

Most of the State of the Union will not be about Iraq. Most of the State of the Union will be about improving America's economy and providing greater access to health care for millions of American people, including senior citizens.