Quotes from Bob Beckel

Money is at the root of most that is wrong in American politics.

Charter schools are not a panacea.

If politicians of both parties would spend more time legislating and less time attacking each other, we would all be better off.

Republicans want to use Obamacare in the 2014 elections against Democrats who voted for it. They want to see it fail, even at the expense of people's health.

It should be mandatory that any tax breaks go through appropriate committees and be voted on separately by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Most voters assume because these political 'pros' are on TV or write for national papers, they know politics. Sadly, most don't have a clue.

Rural voters believed the Democrats traded millions in campaign cash at their expense. Along came a guy named Trump to give these voters a political voice.

What I have learned over hundreds of campaigns is if you have lost voters who have supported you in the past, you can get them back. If you never had them, it is a very difficult sell.

Congress votes for things the military doesn't want, and planes and other weaponry that cost a lot but don't work.

Republicans need to stop complaining about blacks voting over 90% for Democrats. If they're not willing to compete in those neighborhoods, they will keep losing those voters.

Iran would have become a nuclear power had President Obama not united most of the world in boycotting Iranian oil sales, which crippled Iran's economy and forced it to negotiate. Other presidents tried to stop Iran's nuclear program. They failed. Obama succeeded.

Iranians have suffered economically under the U.S.-led sanctions.

In the 1990s, the Democratic Party began to cozy up to their long-time enemies: Wall Street Bankers. They took their money and relaxed their regulations until the Great Recession forced the Democrats via Dodd-Frank to re-regulate the banks.

Like many other Americans, I'm tired of the U.S. taxpayer paying for foreign wars, especially when the countries we defend have raked in huge oil profits.

It's time to review what damage the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has done to our political system.

I have long believed there is a lot of waste in the defense budget.

I don't have a problem with stepped-up surveillance as long as we follow the rule of law.

As a survivor, you learn how to talk fast, cut deals, lie when you have to - perfect training to be a politician, you know?

Asking politicians to vote themselves out of power is like asking rabbits not to multiply, it ain't natural.

Unless public officials are wealthy and fund their own campaigns, the only place they can turn to is lobbyists and institutions like labor unions and corporations.

Carmakers do not lobby to remove safety regulations on their vehicles, but the NRA constantly lobbies to keep restrictions off deadly weapons.

Every time I think that political analysts and writers will finally recognize that most of them don't understand much about political polls, they prove me wrong. They don't know how to read them; they don't understand the importance of cross tabs within a given poll, and they don't know how to analyze them.

My pop culture ended somewhere north of Elvis but not too far.

On the road to the GOP nomination, Trump earned the reputation as a good debater by slandering and bullying his opponents, knocking them out with cheap shots and lies. On a crowded stage, Trump got away with these deplorable tactics.