Tapper’s Liberal Friends Accept Romney, Dionne Sees Liberal Hypocrisy on al-Awlaki, Kristol on Christie's ‘Big Splash’

Three comments that caught my attention on the Sunday morning interview shows:

> ABC News White House reporter Jake Tapper recounted that whenever he has dinner with liberal friends “you can hear them making their peace with Romney,” saying “‘he seems centrist,’ or ‘you know, he’d be good at jobs,’” so “that's a problem for President Obama.”

> On the killing of terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. admitted: “You’ve got to be honest and say, what would liberals say if George Bush had done this?”

> And on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol, an advocate for Chris Christie, may have made an unintended fat joke: “If he jumps in the pool, he’ll make a big splash.”

Pressed by host Chris Wallace as to whether Christie will make a presidential run, Kristol predicted he will while NPR’s Mara Liasson and FNC’s Brit Hume guessed he will not.

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Jake Tapper during the roundtable on ABC’s This Week:

One point about Romney which is, he is the only one on stage, when I watch these debates, who is running a general election campaign already. He is the only one who is trying to appeal to independents and Democrats who are persuadable. When I went up to New York City for the UN General Assembly a few weeks ago, I had some dinner with friends, liberal Democrats who live in New York, not that that’s – there’s a lot of them up there -- and you can hear them making their peace with Romney. Every time I go up there, you can hear them making their peace with, “Well, he seems centrist,” or “you know, he’d be good at jobs, he’d be good at getting jobs.” And I think that's a problem for President Obama, if he gets the nomination.

E.J. Dionne Jr., formerly a Washington correspondent for the New York Times and Washington Post, on NBC’s Meet the Press roundtable:

I think there is a legitimate question about targeting a U.S. citizen. You've got to be honest and say, what would liberals say if George Bush had done this? I actually agree with Congressman Becerra. Al-Qaeda, if anybody’s at war with us, it's al-Qaeda. So I, in the end, come to the same conclusion that the President did. But, this is a hard question. And we should acknowledge it.