Even with the country on the brink of default, the Senate’s highest ranking Republican says his “single most important” goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told National Journal‘s Major Garrett in October.

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Fox News’ Bret Baier asked McConnell Sunday if that was still his major objective.

“Well, that is true,” McConnell replied. “That’s my single most important political goal, along with every active Republican in the country.”

“But that is in 2012,” he added. “Our biggest goal for this year is get this country straightened out and we can’t get this country straightened out if we don’t do something about spending, about deficit, about debt and get the economy moving again. So our goal is to have a robust vibrant economy to benefit all Americans.”

McConnell told Baier that a “Grand Bargain,” where Republicans agree to tax hikes in exchange for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, was likely off the table.

“I think it is. Everything they told me and the Speaker is to get a big package would require big tax increases in the middle of the economic situation that is extraordinarily difficult with 9.2% unemployment. We think it’s a terrible idea. It’s a job-killer.”

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“Nobody is talk about not raising the debt ceiling,” McConnell later insisted.

Taking a break from debt limit talk, the Senate’s top Republican also said that it was time to send more terrorism suspects to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

“They are going the try a couple of foreign terrorists in Kentucky, my state, whose fingerprints were found on IED’s in Iraq. These foreign terrorists are enemy combatants. They should be taken to Guantanamo. They should be tried in military commissions.”

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Watch this video from Fox’s Fox News Sunday, broadcast July 10, 2011.



