Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers -- and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.
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.
Look, you're not going to get me to say that Democrats don't make mistakes. We do. I mentioned two areas - pension reform and seniority and tenure. I've done both - I've advocated for both. I've advocated for - seek for reform as well.
And they are much more skeptical of the very idea of having immigration limits, whereas the public - again, independents and Democrats, as well as Republicans, although not necessarily all in the same proportions - have a much stronger sense of the American government and American law having responsibility to Americans specifically rather than to people around the world. So the polarization is up versus down, not really right versus left.
Incumbent White House parties have won 10 of the last 18 presidential elections; the odds are tight, but they favor Obama in 2012. And so gloomy Democrats, check your despair; gleeful Republicans, watch the hubris.
I'm too fiscally conservative for the Democrats and too socially liberal for the Republicans, like 75% of the American people.
You're probably bored now hearing me cite how many seats the Democrats lost nationwide, national, state, local, in those three elections, In the 2010 midterms, the 2014 midterms, and in 2016. It's over 1500 seats.
The problem we have is not Democrats versus Republicans. It is a Washington cartel. I've said many times the biggest divide we have politically is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between career politicians in both parties and the American people.
Too many Americans live by Republican principles of faith, family, hope and opportunity, but vote for Democrats out of sheer habit.
The fact is that we wouldn't be in Iraq if it weren't for Democrats like Senator Kerry.
The Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt where money is concerned. It's only in the amount where the Republicans excel.
For 50 years, the Republicans have been accusing the Democrats of being soft on national security.
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.
The Democrats pulled out one of their most powerful surrogates - and no, it wasn't President [Barack] Obama. Beyoncé showed up at a GOTV rally in Cleveland, joining her husband, Jay Z, and Hillary Clinton.
Why did God make so many dumb fools and Democrats?
Most people don't see themselves as Democrats or Republicans. They see themselves as Americans.
The Democrats have this high level of expectation of what government can do.
We had a great lunch. Senator Capper paid for it. The Republican pays, as usual. And everything that the Democrats are doin' now, the Republicans pay for it. Everybody asks me, "Will, how long is this going to go on, spending all this money and everything going like this?" I says, "Well, it will go on just as long as the Republicans has got any money. That's all I know about it. "
The [media] coverage is always, "Will [Democrats] get it? Will they get what they want?" And, really, it's even worse than that. It's not, "Will they get it?" It's "How soon will they get it, and what are the villains gonna do to try to stop them from getting it?"
Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush? A real-life opposition party would have been insulted to be matched with a such an unworthy and frail rival. The Democrats, by contrast, got their lights punched out.