Bill Kristol Quotes
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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.
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I think Rumsfeld was not a good Defense Secretary. I'm glad he's gone.
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Some discrimination is perfectly reasonable. The discrimination between trying to teach our kids what most of human history has thought was a desirable lifestyle that will contribute to their happiness, and trying to deter them - not to prohibit, and not to punish - but trying to steer them in a direction that will contribute to their happiness.
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Conservatives shouldn't count on the Supreme Court to do our work for us on Obamacare. The Court may rule as it should, and strike down the mandate. But it may not. And even if it does, the future of health care in America - and for that matter, the future of limited government - depends ultimately on the verdict of the American people.
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Power tends to corrupt - so we should, in both the public and the private spheres, be on guard against, and erect sturdy guardrails against, the corruptions of power.
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I think the failures of Republican governance led to a distrust of Republican elites, which is fair enough.
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I'm choosing not to accept the Trumpification of the GOP as an irreversible fact.
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A woman, like a man, should be treated with human decency, according to the rule of law, and free of the abusive, unjust exercise of power. And you don't need to have plumbed the depths of the female or male psyche to live in accord with these principles of civilized life and the maxims of a free society.
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American history has always had elements of what we now think of as Trumpism - Joe McCarthy, George Wallace, Father Coughlin. It's not as if these things haven't always existed, and they were powerful. The big difference is Trump is president.
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If the American people really come to a settled belief that Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over.
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It's not a serious document.
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So WE are to blame for the 'bad blood' with Russia. Not what Putin has done in Ukraine, in Syria, in the UK, at home, or with respect to our elections. Amazing.
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The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.
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I personally - if I were designing the tax code - would have a tax code in which Mitt Romney paid more than 13 percent, given what I know about the kind of investments he made money from.
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Republican government presupposes decent and admirable qualities among its citizens - so we should be serious about strengthening character and inculcating virtue.
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The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion.
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If terror groups are to be defeated, it is national governments that will have to do so. In nations like India, governments will have to call on the patriotism of citizens to fight the terrorists. In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit.
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Immigration policy is a complicated issue. Or perhaps one should say immigration policies are complicated, since we have many different immigration laws and practices which interact in complex ways.
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Conservative policies have on the whole worked - insofar as any set of policies can be said to 'work' in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.
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In many cases, it's a choice. There are many, many human beings through history - millions and millions and millions - who have been both homosexual at times in their lives and then heterosexual, or vice-versa, or bisexual. How can it be a biological imperative if people can change?
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Patriotism is an indispensable weapon in the defense of civilization against barbarism.
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In terms of the conservative movement, I do think it would be foolish to deny that Trump has exposed certain aspects of that movement as less healthy than I thought or hoped.
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I'm trying to uphold what was true about conservatism. I consider myself a Reagan conservative.
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I don't think Palin really led to Trump. Was this somehow a bit of a precursor or something? I'm willing to say, 'Maybe so.'