Bill Kristol Quotes
-
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.
-
I'm choosing not to accept the Trumpification of the GOP as an irreversible fact.
-
Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.
-
The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion.
-
We're to blame for the 'bad blood.' Not Putin. The real meaning of America First is Blame America First.
-
If the American people really come to a settled belief that Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I think the failures of Republican governance led to a distrust of Republican elites, which is fair enough.
-
Patriotism is an indispensable weapon in the defense of civilization against barbarism.
-
It's not a serious document.
-
Well, Foley is responsible for it, and the voters in Florida, I guess, who elected him. Maybe they should have known better.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I'm trying to uphold what was true about conservatism. I consider myself a Reagan conservative.
-
Republican government presupposes decent and admirable qualities among its citizens - so we should be serious about strengthening character and inculcating virtue.
-
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.
-
I'm absolutist on Trump. He shouldn't be president. We should limit the damage he can do as president. And we should try as hard as we can to prevent him from being renominated or reelected.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The rule of law is crucial to a civilized society - so we should go out of our way to uphold and strengthen it to the extent possible.
-
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?