Week In The News: Santorum Surges, China Visit, Iran Tensions

With Anthony Brooks in for Tom Ashbrook.

Santorum surges. Iran, and Israel – tit for tat. China comes calling. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

In politics this week it was all about a Santorum surge and more doubts about Romney’s ability to excite the party faithful.  And speaking of surges, President Obama’s poll numbers are up as he pushed to raise taxes on the wealthy — again, which Republicans dismissed — again.

Overseas — new signs that Iran is feeling the squeeze of western sanctions.  Syrian cities remained under fire; Greece remained gripped by a debt crisis.  And we lost Pulitzer Price winning journalist Anthony Shadid.

This hour, On Point: our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
-Anthony Brooks

Trudy Rubin, “Worldview” columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Reid Wilson, editor-in-chief of National Journal Hotline

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst.

Detroit Free Press "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he wouldn’t have let General Motors and Chrysler be liquidated during the financial meltdown of 2008-09, but he also said by intervening in the bankruptcy proceedings, the Obama administration made the solution a political, rather than a legal process."

Foreign Policy "With Hu's reign coming to an end, the Chinese people have realized that after Mao Zedong, no Chinese leader has been as hostile to the West as President Hu. Instead of launching political reforms, he tried to use the Chinese model of "crony capitalism" to compete with the Western democratic system. And the state of human rights in China took a huge step backward."

The New York Times "A string of aggressive gestures by Iran this week — assassination attempts on Israelis living abroad that were attributed to Tehran, renewed posturing over its nuclear program and fresh threats of economic retaliation — suggest that Iranian leaders are responding frantically, and with increasing unpredictability, to the tightening of sanctions by the West. "