Quotes from Karl Rove

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.

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.

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.

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.

I supported Pat Toomey when he ran in 2010. I gave him money in September of 2009 because I wanted him to be the U.S. senator. I personally contributed my own money.

If we do with Latinos what we did with African-Americans, Republicans and conservatives will be doomed.

The effective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp it.

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 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.

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.

Our competition for American business is no longer in the next county or the next state, it's around the world.

In Europe and the United States, you've got different systems to select candidates, and no system is perfect.

Well, I'm a Christian. I was a born a Presbyterian and became an Episcopalian.

We've been probably to some degree too successful.

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.

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.

Crossroads is second to none in our support of Tea Party candidates. In 2010 and '12, we spent over $30 million for Senate candidates who were Tea Party candidates. We spent almost $20 million for House candidates who were Tea Party candidates.

Remember the Tea Party movement didn't get started in September of 2008 when the bank bailout was passed. It really began on Feb. 19th, 2009 when a television commentator named Rick Santelli stood up and said what the hell are we doing bailing out people who couldn't afford a mortgage by taking money from people like me who are prudent?

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.

I left the White House in 2007. You know, I knew when I went there that it would be for a limited period of time. I was grateful that the average tenure of a white house senior aide is 18 to 20 months. I was there for nearly seven years.

Alinsky's 1971 book, 'Rules for Radicals,' is a favorite of the Obamas. Michele Obama quoted it at the Democratic Convention. One Alinsky tactic is to 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' That's what the White House did in targeting Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer.

For a person who promised hope and civility in politics, Mr. Obama has shown a borderline obsessiveness in blaming Mr. Bush.

I think if you talk to my colleagues, I was less than a fearsome individual.

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.