If you really want to diminish a candidate, depict him as the foil of his handler. This is as old in American politics as politics itself.
It's time to put America at the front of all of our agendas and to find ways to work together on common ground.
Ronald Reagan wasn't in the establishment of the Republican Party either, nor was Richard Nixon.
I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble.
Would I like to see the Republican Party be the dominant party for whatever time history gives it the chance to be? You bet.
I hate to sound sort of diffident about it but it strikes me that a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things.
My name is Patrick Fitzgerald ... I like to tear the tops off small animals.
There has to be a consequence to failure. Schools in the inner cities cannot be told, 'Oh, we want you to teach every child to learn how to read and, incidentally, if you fail to do that there's no consequence,' .. There has to be a consequence to failure, and the Title I money needs to follow the child.
I know enough about European politics to know you've got a lot of crazy people who make their way onto the ballot.
But the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein gone.
Now is the time to be bold. It is easy when the wind is at your back. But the real test is now when the wind is in our face. That's when we find out if we are tough enough. Inspired enough, committed enough.
As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.
I think it was Osama bin Laden's [idea to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq].
Guy got in a gyrocopter in Gettysburg, flew under the radar all the way to Washington and came - What if he had had rather than petitions to Congress had had a bomb?
Negative politics have always been around.
When you appoint someone, you appoint somebody because of their character, their convictions, their abilities. And not because you have a belief, a confidence, in a foreordained outcome in any given decision.
There is a difference between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. Senator Obama believes that the government ought to be able to take as much as it thinks it needs from anybody.
One of the great things about America is that we have the freedom to worship or not worship as we please. It doesn't matter whether you're a Christian, Jew, Muslim. It doesn't matter whether you're an evangelical or a Catholic or a moderate Jew. You're entitled to worship - or an agnostic or atheist.
The government that can take everything from somebody can take everything from everybody. And there ought to be a limit.
If you make a mistake, clean it up quicker rather than later.
Mr. Obama has an ingenious approach to job losses: He describes them as job gains.
I mean, if you have to wake up in the morning to be validated by the editorial page of the New York Times, you got a pretty sorry existence.
Somebody gets to be smart and somebody gets to be dumb. If we win, it'll be because of the president. And if we lose, it'll be because of me.
I believe in the principles of the Republican Party.
Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.
I've been booed on stages. I'm a little bit tougher than to walk off a stage because someone says something ugly.
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Social Security is fine for those at or near retirement today. For those receiving their checks today, don't worry. It's going to be there for you. For those that are nearing their retirement years, don't worry, it's going to be there for you. But for your kids - for your boy and my boy, and for their children, for our kids and grandkids, it's a real big question as to whether or not the system's going to be there.
Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.
That's important, I think, for people who come here to realize that we are here for only a time and we have an obligation of service and we need to keep things in perspective.
The difficulty for Mr. Obama will be when the public sees where his decisions lead - higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery.
It's a mandate for you to do in office what you said you would do on the campaign trail.
I`m not planning to endorse anybody. I have a long friendship with the family and a long friendship with Jeb [Bush], but I`m, like a lot of people, sitting on the sidelines watching and waiting.
Well, marriage is a very important part of our culture and our society. If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal.
But, look, Washington is a town that creates myths for its own existence and its own amusement, and I was a subject of myth, sort of like Grendel in Beowulf - you know, not seen very often but often talked about.
America has become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day.
In chaos, there is opportunity.
It's been just a year since the RNC committed to revamp the way they help our candidates with its 'Growth and Opportunity Project,' and already there are signs of improvement. From new leadership and initiatives in the digital arena, to improving the GOP ground game (as we just saw with David Jolly's victory in FL-13), to the historic decision to restructure the primary calendar and primary debates, the RNC's steps will help keep the House and to take the Senate in 2014, win the White House in 2016, and build for the future. Looking forward to more progress in the months ahead.
If you decide to become a political actor, then the things that you say and you do become subject of public scrutiny and comment.
I believe in traditional marriage.
Our [Republicans'] object is to avoid having stupid candidates who can't win general elections, who are undisciplined, can't raise money, aren't putting together the support necessary to win a general election campaign, because this money is too difficult to raise to be spending it on behalf of candidates who have little chance of winning in a general election.
If we're going to have a strong and dynamic economy in the years ahead, we need to tackle some of the structural challenges that our economy faces and the tax code is one of the biggest.
The president has an obligation to serve all the people of America.
5,000 years of human history should not be overthrown by the acts of a few liberal judges or by the acts of a few local elected officials.
The Democratic Party's problem is that voters don't believe the president's claims that the economy is thriving. Even people with jobs feel apprehensive. Paychecks are flat, growth anemic, and people are worried about their children's prospects. Mr. Obama had a 38% approval on handling the economy in the Sept. 9 Fox News poll. In the Sept. 7 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 67% believe America is on the wrong track.
And I think there's something about conservatives frankly - and the Left, when it comes to their channels of persuasion, are unpersuasive. They are, most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.
I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian race as fear-based, smear-based and anything goes.
I think wealthy conservatives are busy investing in profit and job creation and enterprise, and wealthy liberals, many of them either from the media industry themselves or from - they recognize the value of communications and are more ready to put money into a less profitable enterprise, namely the media.
'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.
It's not comfortable for me to write about my family. I'm not comfortable writing about me.
You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to the math.
So Americans do want their presidents, by and large, you want them to be people who get things done and have experience. That's going to be Trump's big disadvantage going into this election, because people are going to be looking back and saying, we've got the guy without the experience who said the things that sounded good. And guess what? That hasn't worked out for us too well.
If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.
Many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview.
Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.
Life is rough for a lot of people. Some people live in greater material circumstances than others, but life is rough for everybody.
Look, America was a narrowly divided country in 2000;49-49 was what Michael Barone called it. It's a 49-49 nation.
At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views of the world.
Marriage is and should be defined as being between one man and one woman.
You may be right that people say: You know what, we had Obama. He was inexperienced. The guy had great rhetoric, sounded good, looked good, but has turned out to be an utter disaster. I want someone where I have confidence and credibility that they're up to the job and that I can trust what they tell me.
I would have strong opinions and be prepared to argue my case, but if you talk to my colleagues, I think you'd find they consider me the jokester, the informal mayor of the West Wing.
I'm not a journalist. I'm a pundit. I'm a commentator, I'm somebody with an opinion.
I think it's dawning on some Democrats that obstructing the Patriot Act, like they've been obstructing everything else, is bad for them politically.
Well, I'm a Christian. I was a born a Presbyterian and became an Episcopalian.
71 percent of the American people think that the federal government should take no more than 20 percent of anybody's paycheck no matter how much they make.
It's a complex system we live in to think the actions that we take have consequences beyond the years in which we serve, and we all have an obligation to do what is best for our country.
The claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.
Our health-care issues is another big structural drag. All of these need to be dealt with if we're going to keep the American economy the most dynamic and flexible in the world.
Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as 'deficits as far as the eye can see.' But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?
We face a brutal enemy who will kill the innocent for one purpose and that is to gain control of the Middle East and to use the leverage of oil to bring down the West, and to attack us again.
What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice.
For a person who promised hope and civility in politics, Mr. Obama has shown a borderline obsessiveness in blaming Mr. Bush.
The labor movement must be destroyed.
But perhaps the most important difference between conservatives and liberals can be found in the area of national security. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban.
Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame's identity on July 11, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn't know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove, and he said that she worked at the Agency and worked on WMD.
The definition of relationships ought to be left up to the states and that proper protections can be put in place for the right to visit in the hospital or the right to inherit or other legal contractual questions like that.
Our competition for American business is no longer in the next county or the next state, it's around the world.
I believe in limited government and the right of the individual to make choices and in a strong national defense and in freedom and liberty as being the right of every person on the face of the Earth.
Every presidential spouse is going to be subjected to scrutiny.
[T]he economy remains the top issue for the electorate.
I think if you talk to my colleagues, I was less than a fearsome individual.
My Greek mythology is not strong enough.
And not only that, I also have the MacBook Air which is really cool. Even my wife is jealous of my MacBook Air.
Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real antiwar movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an antiwar rally.
I wish I had the billions of dollars that George Soros has that he has used to fund Democratic causes in the past.
If we do with Latinos what we did with African-Americans, Republicans and conservatives will be doomed.
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.
Would the Iraq War have occurred without WMD? I doubt it.
To be able to compete, we've got to improve our education system, our litigation environment, our tax code, our health system and our trading policies if we're going to be as strong economically in the years ahead.
In America we believe there ought to be limits on government.
The effective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp it.
We need to be asking for the vote in the most powerful way possible, which is to have people asking for the vote who are comfortable and look like and sound like the people that we're asking for the vote from.
You're entitled in this country to worship as you please or to not worship. It's one of the great things that defines us as a nation, and it's at the heart of what it is to be in America.
In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.
Once again the powers of light and good have triumphed over the media!
If you are wealthy and can hire enough accountants and attorneys, you can find ways around the code. It's fundamentally not fair. It wastes a lot of time and energy and effort to comply with it. It doesn't encourage savings and investment. And we need to simply it and make it more fair.
If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek.
All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all. Reality is what you say it is.
Senator McCain believes there ought to be a limit to how much the government can take from anybody, and he believes that today with the federal tax rate at 35 percent that that's more than the government ought to be taking from any individual regardless of how much they make.
To win in November, Republican candidates must show they are in touch with voter concerns about growth, jobs, paychecks, government spending and debt. The only way to do this is by offering specific, persuasive ideas.
In Europe and the United States, you've got different systems to select candidates, and no system is perfect.
