Mark shields quotes

The economy of the United States gross domestic product doubled from 1996 to 2015, doubled, more than, $8.8 trillion to $17.1 trillion. And the median household income went down.

Once I accuse you of racist, I have demonized you, and it means any future collaboration, cooperation between us is a sign of my moral deficiency, if I would deal with someone like that. It's a terrible thing to do.

It's tempting to remember that the Tea Party had a peak and then the Republican Party establishment sort of beat it back down. And so these things are won in a day.

If Mitt Romney had got the percentage Ronald Reagan did of Hispanics, he would have defeated Barack Obama.

Everybody who served in John Kerry's boat under his command save one has stood with him.

I do think what the Tea Party also had was Obamacare and the unpopularity of that, at least at the time. And so whether there is something that is equally unpopular and equally galvanizing that is almost self-destructive from the administration, that's another factor that we will wait and see.

The measure of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but whether, as Franklin Roosevelt said, we provide enough for those who have too little.

There is always strength in numbers

[Donald trump] is moved from the enemy being Barack Obama, now gone, fading is Hillary Clinton, and there is no question he's chosen the enemy.

I'm not sure Betsy DeVos has ever spent a day in a public school. And I don't - I'm pretty sure Donald Trump hasn't.

The single worst campaign slogan I have ever heard, is Hillary's Clinton, "I'm with her," it means nothing. It absolutely means nothing to anybody. I mean, it's about appealing - and it says nothing about anybody's life, about the country.

The problem is that every study I'm aware of, which is probably not that many, has indicated that a dollar spent in preparation and avoidance of natural disasters is worth $15 that is spent in relief. But there's no political payoff for preparation. So, who benefits? I mean, the governor or senator or the president? Bill Clinton at Oklahoma City, his performance there helped him enormously. And there really hasn't been any regulation that would, in fact, interfere with environmental disaster.

America is Republican until 5:00 or 6:00 at night.

Donald Trump defies gravity. And so I guess he has to be Donald Trump. It's gotten him so far.

I think the Democrats did a terrible disservice, the Hillary Clinton campaign did, to Tim Kaine. Tim Kaine had the earned reputation of being one of the most respected and well-liked, and not cheap partisan members of the United States Senate. And they turned him into an attack dog.

Drones are sort of the perfect weapon for a country that doesn't want to go to war. It only - there's no fingerprint. There's no direct involvement. There's human beings killed on the other end. You never see them. You don't have to worry about them. You don't have to meet their widows. It's sort of an antiseptic warfare.

The other thing that has changed - and this is more detailed to CPAC than the general Republican Party - is they have always been an outsider, Ann Coulter, sort of protest style, a little ruder than most Republicans. And this goes back all the way to [Ronald] Reagan.

Everyone has to take Donald Trump seriously, and I think that's what we're seeing.

Donald Trump is writing a different theme, which is it's midnight in America and that things are bad, and they're bleak, and they're gloomy and they're doomy, and the only thing that is going to save you is someone with the authority and power of somebody like me.

The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can't outsource your work; you can't move your emergency department to Pakistan.

In a strange way, Hillary Clinton was helped and victimized by Barack and Michelle Obama.Michelle Obama was probably better than Barack Obama, if you think about it.Her speech is a masterful, masterful speech. And she delivered it in a persuasively conversational tone.

Franklin Roosevelt had a pretty clear line. Ronald Reagan had a pretty clear line, people who rescue parties.

If an abduction is reported, it is dealt with in the same way as a kidnap.

Gone is any mention of American exceptionalism. I happen to believe that twice, three times in the 20th century, the United States saved Western democracy, both World War - both World Wars and the Cold War.

I think Hillary Clinton - first of all, it's a great victory, acknowledge it. She has made history.

President [John F.] Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs, said to Turner Catledge of The New York Times: I wish you had written more, I wish you had investigated more, because it might have saved the country of the cataclysm of the Bay of Pigs.

Stronger together is, I think, a preposition and a comparative adjective, but it's not really an action verb or what it is.

Every Republican candidate in the country is going to be asked whether in a debate or where else, by opponents or by the press, do you consider Donald Trump to be an appropriate role model for the children of our state? And it just - as far as the women's vote reported on in Georgia, it makes it so, not simply difficult. It makes it almost impossible for somebody with self-respect, who has a mother or sister or a daughter, somebody like this in Abraham Lincoln's chair.

Donald Trump is sounding the same theme he has sounded since May or June of 2015.

The Democrats are now an upscale party.

As long as Republicans won't - won't raise taxes and as long as Democrats won't in any way make entitlements based on need, rather than just across the board, I really think that we're doomed to this deadlock.

Health care, it's going to be political. It's going to be, let's say, the confluence of the politics and the messy implementation.

Being a party chair, you really have a chance to make a difference. but what the Democrats have to do is recognize and accept the fact that they're at their lowest point [in 2017] since 1928 in the United States House of Representatives and their lowest point since 1925 in states.

All politics is personal with President Trump. And that carries with it great, great problems.

The Democrats have tried the war against women in the past. It didn't really have that much traction.

When you have got military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, they're intended for one purpose. And that is to inflict as much damage on human beings in as short as time as possible.

The problem with smear campaigns is that too often they work.

I thought what Steve Bannon said was probably more chilling or more threatening than anything the president [Donald Trump]says, I mean, because he said, it's a constant day. We have to defeat the press.

Now Republicans are a more interventionist party than they have been at any time since George W. Bush left office.

George Washington was the president who could never tell a lie, and Richard Nixon was the president who could never tell the truth. Donald Trump is truly the president who can't tell the difference.

Dan Coats, retiring senator from Indiana, a mild-mannered man, a former United States ambassador to Germany, former congressman, said of Ted Cruz he's the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I have ever seen.And he said, you can quote me on that.

George W. Bush in 2000 went to private financing for the nomination, but he accepted public funding in the general. And, quite frankly, so did - it was broken in 2008, when Barack Obama decided he wasn't going to do that.

There are people who know Hillary Clinton who tell wonderful stories about her, how likable she is, how funny she is; 99 percent of American people don't - have never seen that side of her.

It's both strategic, to get people's minds off other things, and to pick an internal enemy. It's part of [Donald Trump's] psychodynamics to always care about his press coverage intensely. He's more interested in that than anything else.

People in the White House work hard, whatever administration. They get rewarded in psychic income, a sense that they are involved in something bigger than themselves, that it's important.

Character is destiny and character is important to American campaigns.

Richard Nixon said it best. It makes no difference whether they hold your nose or whether they go would through a wall to vote for you. It counts the same with the X.

When you run for president of the United States, everybody does the same thing in the campaign-they talk about veterans, how much they admire them, how grateful they are.

You can't have someone with a pinkie out there at the U.N. or any other place.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

American education will be determined by the quality of American public education, and that's public schools that are available.

Critics of Donald Trump take him literally, but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

One of the first things every press secretary assures you is, the boss has a wonderful sense of humor, because not to have a sense of humor is considered flagrantly un-American.

I think part of Donald Trump's appeal is that he's a guy that does cut corners, that he's the guy that does get deals and maybe does break a speed limit. I think there was sort of a roguish, rascally, but I get things done even if I break the rules.

Basically, global capitalism, basically to support it, or is it to be opposed? Is international order to be supported, or is it to be opposed? Republicans have taken a very clear line.

That's the job of a free press is to hold the lamp up, to investigate, to hold accountable. And denying access, as Sean Spicer did , is the first step toward a dictatorship.

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

[Hillary] Clinton is much more embracing of the global economy and the international world order. [Ben] Sanders and [Scott] Warren are much less so.

Mitt Romney was the man who stood up to Donald Trump early, hard, never wavered.

There is always strength in numbers. The more individuals or organizations that you can rally to your cause, the better.

Lee Atwater,[Ronald] Reagan's strategist, had no patience for CPAC, because he thought they were sort of wild and immature, basically.

There's nothing wrong with being organized.Things that change history tend to be organized.

Americans don't like powerful figures who punch down, that is, who pick on someone less powerful and less able to speak for themselves than they are.

I do look upon the secretary of education's primary responsibility as the quality of education that - and improving the education that every child in American public schools receives.

The organizing principle of the United States defensive foreign policy had been opposition to the Soviet Union. There is no more Soviet Union.

The Republicans have, with some pride - George W. Bush won the White House by promising to restore dignity to the Oval Office. And they were or presented themselves as the family - the party of family values.

There is no tougher job in America than being a cop on the beat in a major city in this country, big and brawling.

The problem is that what Donald Trump said, if you take it literally now, is cause for anxiety and nervousness.

It's interesting how identity politics and Ann Coulter-style tactics have now blossomed. But they were always there in CPAC.

When the size of the group supporting your cause reaches a critical mass, any legislator or elected official has to pay attention.

But the people at home if we're doing a town meeting or a town format. You have to answer the question that is asked. And what people at home are gauging how does this candidate respond to the questioner? Do they show respect to the questioner? Do they try to understand why the questioner is asking that? Do they respond to the question? Is there a human connection between the two? It's where Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012. He lost the voters on who was a stronger leader, who had a vision for the future, but on who cares about people like me, he trounced Mitt Romney.

Tim Kaine didn't come across authentic. It wasn't good. And it was - it just really - I think, for short-term benefit, I think the Democrats tarnished the brand, which is an awfully good brand.

I think any advocate who is effective has fully acquainted himself or herself with the legislator they are going to meet. Know what committees they are on, what issues they are interested in, all in an effort to build a bridge for communicating with them.

The Republicans are looking at a country that is going to be a majority minority country in just over a generation. And they are an increasingly white party.

White working-class voters or working-class voters have felt abandoned, have felt, in many senses, disparaged by the political leadership of America.

I don't think he should make foreign policy on the basis of peak,but I don't think it can be overstated that Israel has been an embattled democracy that has enjoyed the bipartisan and overwhelming support of Americans. It has been a moral force.

Hillary Clinton, at the end of the debate, what you want viewers to say, yes, she's smart, she's knowledgeable, but she's not a bad egg, you know? Not a bad egg is a pretty high compliment in American politics, given the toxic atmosphere in which we currently dwell.

It doesn't have to be the same line that we have had for the last 40 years, because that clearly isn't working on any level. But you have got to have a pretty clear line on this crucial issue.

Tim Kaine kind of gives the warmer, human face of the Democrats.

George Bush says what John Kerry did was noble. Yet he sees him being savaged by his own supporters.

I do think that Republicans are flirting with their tax cut, which has always been the narcotic of Republicans, that they in fact have to at some point, with any remote pretense of candor, abandon any pretense of a balanced budget.I mean, they talk about - because they are going to finance the tax cut by tax cuts. That's how they're going to do it. And I do think that the will is there right now in the Congress to act. I think they will be as close to unity as you will see on Capitol Hill this year.

Big money buys access in Washington, and access purchases influence. It is as simple as that. And they have basically given a green light, a further green light, after Citizens United, to the biggest money to have the bigger voice in our politics, and to sound out and drown out the voice of just ordinary citizens.

John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!

You have to understand that Republicans are on lockstep on one issue. They will not raise taxes. Democrats are in lockstep on another issue, pro-choice in all cases on abortion.

I thought Mike Pence, upon reflection to me, came across a little bit like your favorite aunt who refuses, in spite of first-person evidence that grandpa has been drunk and disorderly in public, that, says, no, no, grandpa would never do that, even though grandpa is being taken off in handcuffs.

You've got people who didn't serve with John Kerry saying they did serve with John Kerry in the boat. With George Bush, we can't find anybody who did serve with him.

I'm sure little Marco [Rubio] didn't think it would stick. I'm sure crooked Hillary [Clinton] didn't think it would stick. These labels do have a certain power to them. And so we will see how it plays out.

If I were John Bolton, I'd take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws.

The stated objective and the mission of Vladimir Putin's Russia is to destabilize the North Atlantic Alliance.

John McCain has become the de facto running mate of George W. Bush.

Donald Trump picked a remarkably nice guy in Mike Pence.

John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.

The Tea Party thing is only apt in some ways. The activism in the town halls, that looks superficially like it. But what the Tea Party did was, they went after the party, the Republican Party, as their vehicle. And parties is how you change history.

My church [Catholisism] is hurting from arrogance and from its indifference to the suffering of children that were abused and the inclination of the leadership to protect the institution, rather than the children.

I think Donald Trump is not going to be impeached [in a ] month. Let's not close out possibilities.I do think that what's happening is great and that people are active and people are just involved in the democratic process.

Hillary Clinton has emphasized that she is afflicted with or possessed of the responsibility gene.

The fact is that it's the most dangerous place to be on the political scale is to brand those on the other side as racist. That's the atomic bomb. That's the nuclear weapon of an American.

I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump was born without the embarrassment gene or the moral reservation gene.

There is no question that, in 1980, Ronald Reagan had been portrayed as a war-monger, somebody who couldn't do anything off a script. And the one debate with President Jimmy Carter, he stood toe-to-toe and reassured people that he wasn't bound and determined to start World War III on the spot and could make a coherent statement.

I think Donald Trump is obviously the more colorful, the more flamboyant, the more dominant personality.

The White House, as Warren Harding said, and I think accurately, is an alchemist. We find out the strengths, the weaknesses and the smarts and the dumbs of whoever those occupants are under the pressure of the presidency.

Let's not pretend that all of a sudden, this is some new system.

We had the clip of [Donald] Trump saying: I'm not president of the globe. I'm president of the United States.[Ronald] Reagan would have never said that. [Dwight] Eisenhower would have never said that, because he would have said, yes, I'm president of the United States, but it's in our interests to be securing a world order.

Russia is a country that has supported, propped up the worst of anti-democratic regimes in the Middle East, that has practiced - mistreated its own press, mistreated its own civil society, and economic intimidation of its neighbors, including invasion of its neighbors.I mean, this is the one country on the face of the earth with the capacity to obliterate the United States.

Sometimes, you just let the country have its way, and you don't try to determine the shape of the country. You sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes.

[In politics] when A goes after B and there's a C, and D and a Q all lined up there, you have no idea who's going to be the beneficiary.

The pattern of American presidential elections is that the more optimistic candidate, whether it's John Kennedy and let's get America moving again, Ronald Reagan, it's morning in America, or Barack Obama, yes, we can, always wins, or nearly always wins.

I have my disagreements with President Obama, but President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He's chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free.

Now the Republicans have a very low-scale, by economic standards, base. Donald Trump has.

There is nothing more basic to our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.

The Democrats have an economic message that is directed at people at the lower end. That has been their cornerstone. The Republicans has been more upscale.

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

The Republicans, they are in the danger of rooting for the country to fail. They look bad that way, I mean, and I want to say to them, cheer up, Republicans. Eventually, things will get worse.

The uncritically admiring supporters and friends of the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], in whose ranks I certainly don't include David [Brooks], but include Charles Krauthammer, the columnist, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, insist on comparing him to the incomparable leader of the British forces in country in part of - during World War II.

It's fine to be an activist, but you're not - if you're not putting up candidates, if you're not getting political, if you're not in your party, then you're probably not going to have long-term change. You will probably dissipate.

Mitt Romney looks like a secretary of state. He looks like the chancellor of the exchequer.

90 percent of American schoolchildren are in public schools. And the emphasis on private schools and charter schools and parochial schools is not unimportant.

This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President.

The final thing the Tea Party had was, they fed into the philosophy that Donald Trump now embodies. So they had a different view of how the world should be governed. And so they had a lot of things that we didn't appreciate going for them as time went by.

Tim Kaine reminds me of - Peter Hart.Tim Kaine is a good neighbor. He's kind of the dependable, you know, friendly, helpful. And, you know, he would be over there. He would give you a hand if there were a problem at the house.

Let's give the president some due here. They had a mess, and he fixed it, and they mobilized a lot of authority, and they did it.

Democrats can have a different version of the line, or they can just say, no, we are the party of international peace and activism, and we're the party that's going to have a civilized capitalism.

I believe devoutly that the national election is the closest thing we have to a civic sacrament of democracy. And I really do think that heed must be paid, and when people make a decision, those who are on the other side, including me, accept it, for that reason.

Campaigns are fun. Campaigns are police escorts, they're airplanes, they're crowds, they're balloons, they're bands, a lot of fun. You speak in vague generalities. You get applause for slogans. And then governing comes. And governing is tedious and it's difficult an it's time-consuming and it demands your attention. And policy isn't vague generalities. It's specifics and it's based on knowledge.