Mark McKinnon Quotes
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Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
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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.
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Running for president is hard. But it's good preparation. Because being president is a lot harder.
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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.
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Contrary to conventional military and game theory, the most effective offense is sometimes a direct attack against your political opponent's greatest strength - not his weaknesses - to place him immediately on the defensive.
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Twitter is not a business. I know its founders would like to think it is. It is, for the most part, a diversion.
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I'm no economist. I don't even play one on TV. I'm just a husband, a father, a taxpayer.
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Drone attacks subvert the rule of law - we become judge, jury, and executioner - at the push of a button.
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Every day I am being told to sign up for Tumblr, Yammer, Friendfeed, Plaxo, Last.fm, ping.fm or the hot social-media tool du jour that happened to get mentioned on Mashable.com. It is like a social-media arms race. Each one of these new tools is like a cool new night club. Hot today, gone tomorrow, replaced with something else.
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Party switching has all the emotional edges and baggage of divorce.
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Technology has had more of an impact on the presidency and how the presidency communicates than anything.
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For most of my life, I've considered myself a political centrist.
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I don't really care how or why Obama got to the right place on gay marriage. I'm just glad he got there.
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As a Republican, I never expected to be working with Hillary Clinton.
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Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.
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Every president becomes a caricature. The press, partisans, late-night shows, and other arbiters of our culture these days boil down complicated and multi-faceted personalities into one-dimensional punchlines.
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The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.
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One thing is clear: Ron Paul defies labels.
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Mention the name George W. Bush in mixed company, and you're likely to spark a lot of debate and emotion - hot and cold, good and bad. Not a lot of neutral reaction. He was elected in the most controversial contest in American electoral history and governed during one of the most tumultuous decades.
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Infrastructure spending does not create immediate jobs, and more than half of those jobs will pull from the pool of the already employed.
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Voters crave authenticity.
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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.
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Republicans working in leadership and the trenches are largely old, white, male, out-of-touch, out of ideas, technology averse, and living in the past.
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Debates require a lot of hard work and preparation. If you try to wing it, it shows.