Gop Quotes

Three explanations dominate speculation about what Obama is up to. The first is that he's trying to lay the groundwork for his successor, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The second is that he's trying to pad his legacy. The third is that he's trying to 'troll' or bait the GOP into debating his agenda rather than pursuing its own. All are plausible, and none necessarily contradicts the others. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The combination of bait the GOP used to catch southern whites was tailored to the region, but it is still bait to all who are hungry. So calls for states' rights, law and order, fiscal conservatism, colorblindness, anti-feminism, men's rights, and Christian nationalism can summon a Southern white majority, but other Americans are beckoned too.... That explains why, over time, at the national level, Republican candidates had no choice but to echo all three of those dog whistles in order to win. Those who did not or could not lost. ~ Angie Maxwell

Republicans are being counseled to move the party to the left, but in my experience, those who advocate more liberal policies for the GOP are wrongheaded or Democrats, or both. ~ Liz Cheney

Truman charged that Republicans were "Wall Street reactionaries," "gluttons of privilege," "bloodsuckers," and "plunderers." GOP legislators in the 80th Congress, he said, were "tools of the most reactionary elements" who would "skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their own greed." Dismissing Dewey, "whose name rhymes with hooey," Truman said, "If you send another Republican Congress to Washington, you're a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are." "Give 'em hell, Harry!" the people shouted back. "Pour it on!"59 ~ James T. Patterson

Anarchists have taken over (the GOP). ~ Harry Reid

For Reagan,for his contemporaries, and many in the generations after them, the word Munich was understood as code for any nation's stepping back from necessary toughness ~ Chris Matthews

I like the Growth and Opportunity Project. These are good conservative values, proving the core of the GOP is just that: conservative. ~ L. Brent Bozell, Jr.

[The GOP] must decide soon where they stand on the issue of socialized medicine. President Clinton threw down the gauntlet in his State of the Union address, when he proposed guaranteeing health insurance for at least half of the 10 million American children who have none. ~ Tony Snow

(in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while shutting DMV offices in areas where Democratic constituencies live and lengthening their hours of operation in GOP-dominated ones); ~ Anonymous

I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime ... unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party. And it has to be a transformation. Not a little tweaking at the edges. ~ Rand Paul

The GOP can't even envision winning the White House if we lose a significant percentage of the Hispanic vote. ~ Luis Fortuno

If, in fact, the GOP doesn't like any form of health care reform, what do we do with those 40 to 60 million uninsured? ... When they show up in the emergency room, just shoot 'em! Kill them! ... Do we have enough body bags? I don't know. ~ Montel Williams

The tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn't remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself. ~ Peggy Noonan

I have often said one of the reasons more blacks don't support Republicans is because they don't trust the GOP establishment. ~ J. C. Watts

The subculture of felons is in great vogue among adolescents. Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and so forth allow us Republicans to say to America's young people, 'We be thugs.' The GOP may capture the youth vote at last. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

That GOP leadership, that establishment, they've got to get their stuff together I love what they believe in, I believe in it too. But they've got to get tough, man. You know what? It's not just the New England Patriots who are dealing with deflated balls right now. ~ Sarah Palin

I want to make a picture about the Russian secret police - the GOP. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

Its belief in polarizing language and tactics, a militant and militarized foreign policy, and a constant search for mortal enemies, foreign and domestic alike, qualifies the current GOP as a radical right-wing party, not a conservative one. ~ Mike Lofgren

The GOP doesn't seem particularly afraid of being perceived as blocking reform, despite efforts by the Obama White House to establish that narrative. ~ Timothy Noah

One thing is certain: those who worked and voted for less government, the very foot soldiers in the conservative revolution, have been deceived. Today, the ideal of limited government has been abandoned by the GOP, and real conservatives find their views no longer matter. ~ Ron Paul

One of the candidates at the early GOP debate, George Pataki, said his routine before every debate is to drink a diet lemon Snapple iced tea and pray. Which is also the advice Chris Christie gets from his doctor. ~ Jimmy Fallon

also get why people aren't beating down the doors of the polling places. For one, we can't keep track of whether we're supposed to bring a DNA sample or a urine sample this time to prove our identity and residency. It keeps changing. For another, the hours and polling locations in poorer neighborhoods keep getting cut for some reason. It is definitely not at all a conscious effort to repress the poor (read likely Democrat) vote. At all. Ever. (Dear GOP: You guys might want to police your people. They keep openly saying that your goal is to repress the vote of the poor.) Additionally, ~ Linda Tirado

We need independents, we need the GOP, we need Reagan Democrats. ~ Sarah Palin

The House GOP continues to fail to address the real & serious issues thatthousands of families face each day. ~ Mazie Hirono

House GOP Leader John Boehner on Monday rightly sounded the alarm over billions in stimulus tax dollars that could potentially go to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). But the Republican leadership has only scratched the surface over what amounts to a bottomless slush fund for a bigger coalition of housing entitlement thugs. ~ Michelle Malkin

The GOP grows more and more unpopular with female voters seemingly every time one of its leaders gets in front of a microphone. Misogynist is as misogynist does. The GOP and its bloviating pundits don't like women and they are unable to hide it, nor do they seem to make much attempt to do so. ~ Henry Rollins

The GOP cannot expect to win the presidency in the future by simply relying on running up big numbers with white voters. ~ Mark McKinnon

The Republican Party is slightly ahead of Democrats when it come to devaluing any traditional understanding of foreign and national security policy. This is not surprising, because in all other matter of public policy, the GOP has strictly subordinated practical governance and problem solving to the emotional thematics of an endless political campaign. Whether the topic is Iran, Russia, or the proper level of defense spending at a time of high deficits, the GOP's stance has little to do with the merits of the situation; it is a projection of domestic political sloganeering. Taking a position on anything, whcther it be Ukraine or the efficacy of drones, boils down to a talking-point projection of focus groups-tested emotional themes: strength versus weakness, standing tall versus cutting and running, acting versus thinking." pp. 157-158 ~ Mike Lofgren

Reagan and his growing right-wing "truth" machine had stirred public opinion to such a frothy head that Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker was warned that a vote for the treaty would cost him any chance at the GOP presidential nomination in 1980. On the way to the Senate floor to cast his aye vote, a popular centrist Democrat from New Hampshire asked his wife to "come on and watch me lose my seat ~ Rachel Maddow

We must regard Sarah Palin as the Carmella Soprano of the GOP
an enabling wife of organized crime, who sees, hears and speaks no evil of the boys in her old-boy network for whom she does this ideological lap dance. ~ Cintra Wilson

1995 government shutdown from GOP underestimating Clinton. ~ Newt Gingrich

During his runs for the GOP presidential nomination, Mitt Romney has done a good job of mimicking Reagan's anti-government diatribes and 'better days ahead' rhetoric. ~ Jackson Katz

Can we please rename The Sandy Relief Bill to the Supplemental Iraq War Funding Bill so the GOP Congress can vote for it? ~ John Fugelsang

One GOP Congressman named Carlos Curbelo actually suggested that Donald Trump may be a 'phantom candidate' that has been planted by the Democrats. The DNC strongly denied this - while Hillary said, 'Crap, they figured it out! Take off the wig, Bill.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

What the 1990s taught the Clinton veterans was that you could 'triangulate' with a GOP-controlled Congress. ~ Timothy Noah

I get a kick out of Democrats thinking they know how handicap a GOP race. ~ Ari Fleischer

Remember, the political idea being expressed a year ago was that because the GOP interpreted its 1994 mandate as a call to budget-balancing austerity, the electorate would never give the White House to the GOP if its nominee was also a root-canal austerian. ~ Jude Wanniski

The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered. I don't think we need to name any names, do we? Our party is encumbered by an inconsistent approach to freedom. The new GOP will need to embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere. ~ Rand Paul

The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument. ~ Eliot Spitzer

There is no softer target in GOP primaries than the United Nations and foreign-aid spending. ~ Elliott Abrams

[Ted] Cruz railed against his fellow senators for not appreciating the risk that Obamacare would destroy healthcare for America's families ... Cruz then lodged a more general complaint against his Senate colleagues who, he said, seemed more concerned with "cocktail parties in Washington, D.C." than with their constituents. Referring to calls that he said were pouring in from around the country, begging legislators to resist and defund, Cruz noted, "It is apparently an imposition on some members of this body for their constituents to pick up the phone and ask for assistance." As I heard him say that, I picked up the phone and called Cruz's local constituent service office in Houston. "Could someone there give me information about how to enroll in Obamacare?" I asked, when I was put on the phone with one of the senator's case workers. "No. We don't support the bill, and think it's a bad idea," I was told. ~ Steven Brill

As a senator from the only true swing district in the Texas Senate, I've been targeted by the GOP for my outspoken criticism of their extremist attacks on public education and voting rights, to name just two examples. ~ Wendy Davis

Which idiot put the GOP convention the same time as 'Burning Man' in Nevada? Is there time to change this? ~ Grover Norquist

I'm a black, gay woman. I think the only way to make the GOP hate me more is if I sent them a video of me rolling around on a pile of welfare checks. ~ Wanda Sykes

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh. ~ Kathleen Parker

The split has widened because the right has moved right, not because the left has moved left. Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford all supported the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1960, the GOP platform embraced "free collective bargaining" between management and labor. REpublicans boasted of "extending the minimum wage to several million more workers" and "strengthening the unemployment insurance system and extension of its benefits." Under Dwight Eisenhower, top earners were taxed at 91 percent; in 2015, it was 40 percent. Planned Parenthood has come under serious attack from nearly all Republican presidential candidates running in 2016. Yet a founder of the organization was Peggy Goldwater, wife of the 1968 conservative Republican candidate for president Barry Goldwater. General Eisenhower called for massive invenstment in infrastructure, and now nearly all congressional Republicans see such a thing as frightening government overreach. Ronald Reagan raised the national debt and favored gun control, and now the Republican state legislature of Texas authorizes citizens to "open carry" loaded guns into churches and banks. Conservatives of yesterday seem moderate or liberal today. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

I think you had the GOP down there in North Carolina reaching out to African-American voters and this guy coming on television and using the N-word and saying what Don Yelton said. ~ Aasif Mandvi

The GOP of old has grown old and moss covered. ~ Rand Paul

Could you imagine me and the roasters taking on the GOP field? It would be the greatest show ever. Prove that you can take a joke. Prove that you're a man or woman of the people. Prove that you're not above criticism even in the form of a backhanded compliment. ~ Jeff Ross

The 2014 election has given the GOP the rare opportunity to retroactively redeem its brand. The conventional perception, incessantly repeated by Democrats and the media, is that Washington dysfunction is the work of the Party of No. Expose the real agent of do-nothing. Show that, when Harry Reid can no longer consign House-passed legislation to oblivion, Congress can actually work. ~ Charles Krauthammer

The GOP leaders are upset with me, but the Republicans around the district are thanking me for stepping up to the plate and giving them a choice in this election of a real common sense conservative Reagan Republican. ~ Doug Hoffman

Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past. ~ Mark McKinnon

In the general election, Nixon refined Goldwater's southern strategy. Unlike Goldwater, who "ran as a racist candidate," Nixon said, the 1968 GOP nominee campaigned on racial themes without explicitly mentioning race. "Law and order" replaced "states' rights." Pledging to weaken the enforcement of civil rights laws replaced outright opposition to them. Nixon "always couched his views in such a way that a citizen could avoid admitting to himself that he was attracted by a racist appeal," said his top aide, John Ehrlichman. ~ Ari Berman

I'm a part of the GOP and let me tell you what my stance is. My stance is that, we the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent in our society. It's not the government's job. You can read the Constitution all you want, it never says that it is the government's job and I think where we've gotten confused. ~ Benjamin Carson

The GOP/corporate right-wing, it seems, never really considers the consequences of their actions. ~ Steven Weber

The GOP cares, over and above every other item on its political agenda, about the rich contributors who keep them in office. This is why tax increases on the wealthy have become an absolute Republican taboo. Caught between their own rich contributors and their voters, Democrats are conflicted and compromised. ~ Mike Lofgren

When Ronald Reagan chose George H.W. Bush in 1980, it was a clear signal that he was running an inclusive campaign; that he welcomed the moderate and even liberal wings of the GOP - there was a liberal wing back then - into his campaign. ~ Jeff Greenfield

Often GOP political strategy seems like the human wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm their adversaries, the GOP uses huge campaign budgets as a substitute for strategy, thought or issues. ~ Dick Morris

What you don't hear from these GOP candidates is that they really can't go after this president on domestic production of oil and gas. He's actually done quite a lot. In fact, I would suspect they're environmentalists who are worried that we're doing too much drilling and fracking, in fact. I know that for a fact. ~ Jared Bernstein

I know the GOP is called the stupid party, but the idea that Republicans can have the Confederate flag hung around their neck is ridiculous! It's a Democrat flag! The flags - states that seceded during the Civil War were all Democrat states. That's their flag. The slave states were Democrat states! The racist states until the 1960s were Democrat states! ~ Sean Hannity

God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function. ~ Robert Novak

You complain and demand zero compromise - so the GOP obstructs Obama so the economy doesn't improve - then you complain and demand even more zero compromise. Then you get to blame Obama for the slow recovery, which is sorta like John Wilkes Booth blaming Lincoln for missing the end of a play. ~ John Fugelsang

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat. ~ Bill Kristol

Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate ... Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis ... ~ George Will

Voters replaced Democratic senators with Republicans in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, and likely in Alaska, and appear on track to do so in a runoff next month in Louisiana. At the same time, voters kept Republicans in GOP seats in heavily contested races in Georgia, Kansas, and Kentucky. That is at least ten, and as many as a dozen, tough races, without a single Republican seat changing hands. Tuesday's voting was a wave alright - a very anti-Democratic wave. ~ Byron York

Jim Gilmore was the only GOP candidate not invited to the Republican debates tonight, but I saw that he actually planned to live-tweet it. When he heard that, Jeb Bush was like 'Can I do that? I don't want to be here!' ~ Jimmy Fallon

I don't really care about the GOPs or the Democratic Party. My point is the people, giving the people truth. ~ Lupe Fiasco

Something very significant appears to be happening in America. There is a dramatic shift in voter affinity toward the GOP, and it may prove to be the mountain-too-high for Barack Obama's campaign. ~ Bob Beauprez

GOP candidates routinely sign a pledge never, ever to raise taxes. Democratic candidates aren't even asked to sign a parallel pledge never, ever to cut entitlements. ~ Timothy Noah

The same electorate that is unhappy with [Pennsylvania's] GOP Sen. Rick Santorum appears to have some qualms with Rendell. ~ Stuart Rothenberg

The crowd had the plump, righteous, slightly constipated look that seems the exclusive province of businessmen who belong to the GOP. ~ Stephen King

On GOP Tax Cuts: They'll take food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to the wealthiest. ~ Nancy Pelosi

We are a grassroots party. We always have been. That's been the strength of the GOP. ~ Michael Steele

The GOP needs to live the planks of its platform, not just offer lip service. ~ Sarah Palin

Of course many southern whites did switch from voting Democrat to voting Republican, helping the GOP become the majority party in the South, as the Democrats once were. But remember that racism declined sharply in the South during the second half of the twentieth century. There is quite literally a mountain of scholarly data that documents this. And this was the very period of GOP ascendancy. So as the South became less racist, it became more Republican. I provide evidence in this book to show that southern whites became Republican not for racist motives but for economic ones. The most racist poor whites never left the Democratic Party; they remained loyal to the party of racism until they died. In this sense, the data show that racism slowed the movement of whites toward the Republicans. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

Democrats can neither control nor predict whether our GOP counterparts are really ready to play chicken with the U.S. economy. But we can assure the American people that our party takes the nation's faith and credit seriously. ~ Peter Welch

If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin. ~ Charles Krauthammer

If the GOP truly cared about saving lives, they'd stop blocking gun violence research. ~ DaShanne Stokes

I grew up in the GOP sandbox. My dad took me, age 7, to meet Herbert Hoover, in his apartment at the Waldorf Towers. He gave me a silver dollar. Being a young Republican, I spent it on comic books. ~ Christopher Buckley

Regardless of how liberal Massachusetts may seem, the Celtics were totally GOP. Like Thomas Jefferson, K. C. Jones did not believe in a strong central government: The Celtic players mostly coached themselves. They practiced when they felt like practicing and pulled themselves out of games when they deemed it appropriate, and they wanted to avoid anything taxing. They wanted to avoid taxes. And they excelled by attacking the world in the same way they had been raised to understand it: You pick-and-roll, you throw the bounce pass, you make your free throws. If it worked in the 1950s, it can work now. ~ Chuck Klosterman

Tip, if I had a ticket to heaven and you didn't have one too, I would give mine away and go to hell with you.

Ronald Reagan ~ Chris Matthews

The religious right provides the foot soldiers for the GOP. This fact has profound implications for the rest of the Republicans' ideological agenda. ~ Mike Lofgren

The GOP establishment, in particular, is facing a pick-your-poison kind of decision. Many establishment Republicans dislike [Ted] Cruz personally. He has no Senate endorsements. ~ Mara Liasson

Even Republicans seem to think that these undocumented Democrats could be made [GOP] voters ... and what happens is that two out every three that would be legalized [and] become Democrats. And it's not 12 million. It's more like 20 million ... But it isn't just the equation of 2/3 of over 20 million that will vote for the guy who opposes our conservative candidate whoever that might be, but it's also those who will leave us if we fail them ... We have to go back and tie together and restore the pillars of American exceptionalism and the rule of law is essential. ~ Steve King

Almost 100 years after women secured the right to vote in 1920 through the 19th Amendment, we still do not have equal rights under the Constitution. My question for the GOP candidates: Do you support the Equal Rights Amendment? ~ Jane Fonda

The Democrats are obsessing about raising tax rates, while the GOP talks about closing loopholes. ~ Bob Beauprez

Like the present-day GOP, the Northern Alliance was a loose coalition of unsavory opportunists, interested chiefly in acquiring power. ~ Andrew J. Bacevich

I suspect as the GOP gets more bizarre, a quiet defection will occur ~ Dee Dawning

I guess the GOP may be more desperate than I thought to call somebody like me. ~ Phil Robertson

Liberals habitually work themselves into a lather about the antics of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, but they are really just political gargoyles looking for ratings as they whip up the GOP faithful. The true danger lies in an ostensibly neutral journalism that most Americans count on to tell them what is going on in the world but which too often acts as a stenographer for powerful and self-serving factions in government operating under a cloak of anonymity. ~ Mike Lofgren

If women took up arms to defend their reproductive rights, the GOP would ban assault rifles yesterday. ~ Steve Marmel

Rick Wilson, a national GOP strategist, has called Trump "a virus that has infected the Republican party." He often recites a litany of vengeful acts Trump has engaged in which disqualify him from the position of Commander in Chief. ~ Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy

It's a coup by the GOP to grab the governorship to California to make this place a safe haven for George W. Bush in 2004. It's incredible when you think about it. The recall cost the state $100 million. ~ Al Jardine

Republicans also took control of the Senate after gaining another seven seats. I haven't seen the GOP get this many seats since Chris Christie made an airline reservation. ~ Jimmy Fallon

Once a popular Alaska governor with a modest record of accomplishment, Palin could conceivably revive her reputation in this era of short memories. But it's hard to imagine her name atop the GOP ballot in 2016, when a cast of heavyweights who sat out 2012 will be vying for the nomination. ~ Ron Fournier

Five GOP representative candidates this session have shocked me to my soul at how blatant they have trivialized rape. My prayers were answered in their defeat! ~ Diane Chamberlain

Obama's claim is that he wants to give. The GOP is saying it wants to take. ~ John Podhoretz

Since 2010, when the GOP took control of many State legislatures, 205 anti-abortion laws have been enacted. This is more laws of this ilk than were passed in the prior decade.16 Since 2010 more than 50 abortion providers in 27 States have ended service, though not all were due to legislation. ~ David A. Grimes, M.D.

The job of conservatives is to keep the Republican Party driving on the right-hand side of the road. There are many ways we do this. We argue, we publish, we lobby, we campaign for conservative candidates. Another thing we do is, when the GOP goes off the rails on really key issues - size of government, the National Question, Wilsonian adventures - we stay home on election day. ~ John Derbyshire