Bill Kristol Quotes
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I had a great ten years at Fox, but it's also been fun being a free agent.
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I was involved in the 'reformicon' effort in 2013-2014, which was explicitly, 'We can't just Xerox Reagan.' In the spirit of Reagan, actually, we could rethink things - maybe we need to think more about job-training programs, earned income tax credit, adjust the tax code.
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Lest conservatives be too proud, it's worth recalling that conservatism's rise was decisively enabled by liberalism's weakness.
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All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments.
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First impressions matter. Most people don't change their political views radically from the ones they first hold.
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Many of Bush's defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I'm perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics.
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While a defeat for Obamacare in the Court would be nice, the defeat of President Obama at the polls on November 6 is crucial. If electoral victory is achieved, Obamacare can and will be repealed - and more judges of a constitutionalist persuasion will be appointed by the next president.
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Romney has to convince the American public that they need to do something they're not usually inclined to do - replace a sitting president with a challenger. And unlike in 1980 and 1992, when the public was persuaded to do just that, the incumbent president has not been weakened by a primary opponent.
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The town hall has the spirit of representative democracy, the rally of autocracy.
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The Republican ticket in 2012 was Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Whatever again you think of them, that's not a dumbed-down ticket.
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If cleverness has often been a sign of decadence throughout history, the attempt to be too clever by half is an even more reliable marker of cultural decline.
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The rhetorical extremism, the winking at violence, the reveling in vulgarity, and the embrace of amoralism are not bugs but features of Trumpism. Intellectual and moral coarsening is both a condition and a consequence of the demagogue's success. Trumpism really does corrupt.
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Bush is no conservative.
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If Romney explains why where we are with Obama is unacceptable, why whither we are tending is even worse - and why his own alternative path forward is superior - then we trust the American people to make the right choice in November.
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Institutions are strong; it turns out you don't need a lot of sensible or even sane leadership in the White House.
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Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not - and more often than liberals - about most of the important issues of the day.
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Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.
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In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.
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Self-government is an experiment. It could still fail.
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There will be trying times during Obama's presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.
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Winners have standards.
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Shouldn't Democrats insist that Sen. Durbin step down as their whip, the number two man in their leadership?
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We're to blame for the 'bad blood.' Not Putin. The real meaning of America First is Blame America First.
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No one can change the definition of what behavior is presidential because that definition fundamentally depends on what our form of government requires, not on what one individual prefers.