Life inside the Beltway bubble dulls your thinking.
Mitt Romney is a businessman, a turnaround artist, a CEO. That is who he is. The former governor has experience in the public and private sector.
Great presidents, and even those not so great, never complained about the hands they were dealt. Just the opposite. They assumed they were in the big chair to meet big challenges, no matter how difficult.
Technology has had more of an impact on the presidency and how the presidency communicates than anything.
The initial attraction of a political convention was that often the outcome was not preordained. There was at least some element of surprise. But, now it's like tuning in to a movie where you already know the plot and the ending. It's just not that interesting.
I'll tell you, Liz Cheney is going to be a very good candidate. I worked with her during the Bush campaigns. She's smart, she's focused, she's disciplined - and she's got a great back story. She's got a large family. She's a great mom. And she's a hard worker. I think she's going to be a very effective campaigner.
Marketers know - no matter how deep the emotional connection or brand loyalty - when a product does not perform, rational thought overtakes emotion, and most consumers make a new choice.
There's no question that many factors contribute to voters' perceptions about debates and who wins and who loses.
Washington doesn't have just a spending problem, or just an entitlement problem, or just a taxing problem. We have a leadership problem. Fix that, and the first three problems are solved.
Running for president is hard. But it's good preparation. Because being president is a lot harder.
If you're a Democrat and 'The New York Times' is calling for your head, you know it's time for an exit strategy.
I think Barack Obama is one of the most exciting politicians to come along in a long time.
I met Barack Obama, I read his book, I like him a great deal. I disagree with him on very fundamental issues.
I don't think that the press in 2004 was any more unfair to Bush than they were to Kerry.
The job of elected leaders is to deliver results that represent the interests of the citizens who placed them in a position of authority with their voice, their vote. But these days, money talks louder.
Hypocrisy is the scarlet letter in politics.
You know, Republicans should have a consistent philosophy. And if your philosophy is about limited government and not intruding in people's lives, you shouldn't just inconveniently take a social issue like gay marriage and say, 'Well, unless we think - actually we should be intruding your life.'
Politics only makes the difficult challenge of marriage even harder, with the demands of the job and the public spotlight it casts on a union.
It's just madness. First email. Then instant message. Then MySpace. Then Facebook. Then LinkedIn. Then Twitter. It's not enough anymore to 'Just do it.' Now we have to tell everyone we are doing it, when we are doing it, where we are doing it and why we are doing it.
Marco Rubio is interesting because he checks so many boxes when you think about what a Republican nominee needs. He brings Florida, he's young, he's Hispanic, the Tea Party likes him. But that said, he's got issues, actually surprisingly, ironically, with Mexican-American voters.
I think the press are good people; I think they're educated people.
Convention speeches are powerful tools to bend the curve of public opinion. George H. W. Bush's 1988 convention speech is a great example. His son's speech was also quite powerful.
Immigration is the most explosive issue I've seen in my political career.
Advocacy groups and voters are not wrong to push candidates to declare their position clearly on policy issues. That is good citizenship. Hard questions should be asked of every candidate, every politician. And those public servants should be prepared to answer, but in their own words.
Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world.
You know, the Tea Party is a - first of all, it is a significant movement, and I think the media and some pundits have tried to write it off as a bunch of cranks or something. But, in fact, it's really a very legitimate and fairly significant swath of voters out there.
Technology and social media have brought power back to the people.
Middle America believes in fair play, an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail.
Conservative women in politics run a punishing gauntlet. They endure psychological evaluations and near-gynecological exams their male and liberal counterparts do not.
Negativity drove me out of politics in the mid-Nineties.
Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. We have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights.
The world is still changing. Faster than ever. And so should the Republican Party. Or condemn itself to a smaller and smaller base of core supporters and permanent minority status.
There's only one way we're going to change our political climate and ensure we establish some respect in our discourse. And that is to show there is a real price to pay for being a disrespectful partisan idiot.
A competition of the best ideas - that should be what Congress is about.
Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past.
If Democrats start consistently winning Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, the electoral outlook for Republicans in the future is mighty bleak.
I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader.
Ah, political physics. Someone wins an election and, poof, they are a candidate for vice president. Ridiculous.
I think that the press has a duty and an obligation to report on local government, state government, federal government - to be aggressive, to do its job. And its job is to report on whatever it's covering.
When you look at the money spent by labor unions for Democrats, it comes as no surprise the Democrats crafted a campaign-finance 'disclosure' bill with the thresholds adjusted to exempt unions.
The Republican Party needs to, first of all, quit electing people in primaries that have prehistoric notions about women's issues.
If we cannot come together to pause, to respect our dead and the heroic lives of meaning they led, then ours is truly a civilization lost.
America glories in its tradition of the self-made individual. Political candidates compete to be a friend to entrepreneurs, and policymakers, imagining the next Microsoft or Google, design laws to back the innovator in the garage.
My brother is one of my true heroes. Steady and sober where I am impulsive and emotional.
Twitter is not a business. I know its founders would like to think it is. It is, for the most part, a diversion.
To open up new markets and create American jobs, we need to make global bilateral free trade agreements a priority as they were under the Clinton administration.
The Hippocratic Oath says do no harm. It's the Hypocritical Oath that says do no harm to one's political future.
I think the press has an interest in communicating to its viewers or readers, and their viewers or readers drive profit for those news organizations, so I think those news organizations have a certain bias toward their own readers. Yeah, I think they are a special interest. Of course they are.
I'm saying it loud: I'm a Republican who supports gay rights.
