Quotes About Partisanship

It is hard to put aside partisanship. It is hard to give up the easy wisecracking jeer that divides and destroys. It is hard - very hard - to have worked sincerely and wholeheartedly for a cause and to have lost. Most of all, it is hard to put aside personal prejudices. And yet we must put these things aside.

Half a century ago, Ronald Reagan, the man whose relentless optimism inspired me to enter politics, famously said that he didn't leave the Democratic Party; the party left him. I can certainly relate. I didn't leave the Republican Party; it left me.

The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats.

After President Obama's election in 2008, there was a widespread hope that it would mark an end to unseemly partisan nastiness.

Engaging in a sycophantic way with any politician in the short term is tempting. It offers the lure of access and the promise of influence. But ultimately, it can lead to misreading the environment, giving too much of an ear to the politician's circle, and confining your audience to partisans.

We tend in this country to talk about Democrats and Republicans, and think there's little group over there called Independents that's maybe 2%. That is not the case, and it has not been the case for most of modern American history.

Political elites vote in a more partisan fashion than the mass public; this tendency, too, follows a curve. The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent way, not just following your party but following a set of constraints dictated by a political ideology.

I think George Will is somebody that said recently that the Republicans will not lose, as a Republican, that the Republicans will not win the election. I think it was a terrible statement.

As a black Republican you sort of find yourself in unique territory.

The Democrat Party is the party of domestic terrorism.

What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked a majority of the majority,' or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America's security foremost in mind?

Personalization is everywhere. We are constantly asked, directly or indirectly, to create Our Own Whatever - containing and limited to our 'favorite sources of information.' Republicans do that; Democrats do it; environmentalists do it; terrorists do it; science fiction enthusiasts do it. That's a real problem, I think.

As the Democratic Party came to be identified as the party of civil rights, white Christians increasingly moved to the Republican Party—a migration that political scientists have dubbed "the great white switch.

Through the twin pathways of white racial identity and the increasing relevance of Republican partisanship in each of these groups, the freewill individualism of white evangelicals has been diffused throughout white American Christianity

Mere mouthpieces of a party, take away the party & they shrivel & vanish.

Poison-pen artists on both sides wrote vitriolic essays that were overtly partisan, often paid scant heed to accuracy, and sought a visceral impact.

I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'.

Politics has become a blood sport that goes beyond just the person whose name is on the ballot.

The two chief weapons which parties use in order to obtain success are the newspapers and public associations.

You know, I respect what Howard Dean has been able to do. It's good for our party. But I've got to tell you this: If money alone decided presidential nominations, Phil Gramm would have been nominated in '96.

I am a Democrat. I have been one all of my life.

For the first half of my adult life, I was a Democrat.

In the tired hand of a dying man, Theodore Senior had written: "The 'Machine politicians' have shown their colors... I feel sorry for the country however as it shows the power of partisan politicians who think of nothing higher than their own interests, and I feel for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.

The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.