John Podhoretz Quotes
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When you have controversial parents, people have expectations about you. If every day at work I thought to myself, 'How does this relate to them?' I'd be paralyzed.
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There's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.
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I was wholeheartedly attracted to the conservative atmosphere that permeated the city of Washington.
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Obama learned from Ronald Reagan that it helps to strike an optimistic tone. But genuine optimism deriving from American exceptionalism, it turns out, does not come naturally to him.
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As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.
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While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompanied - and to some extent overshadowed - by elevated and inspiring ideas about the American future.
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Newt Gingrich never received more than 100,000 votes in his life. He'll never be president.
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Is victory sweet because your side wins - or is it really because the other side loses?
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One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.
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America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.
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Newt Gingrich has a restless and outsized intelligence that is tragically unleavened by any kind of critical sensibility.
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Obama's explanation for the slowdown in economic growth is that the public sector is hurting, and that's where Washington must step in and act.
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Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.
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Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president.
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You want a culture where citizens are free to express themselves and so live in the openness necessary to the functioning of a successful economy? Israel has a free press, much of it openly hostile to the parties in power.
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If you want to know why Republicans and conservatives are in a political crisis, you need only consider the fact that the Right's deeply held view now boils down to this: Taxes should not go up on the wealthy, and your health benefits should be cut.
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In the Democratic primary in 2008, the Obama team devised a strategy to use the caucuses and a complicated system of awarding delegates in the state primaries to sneak up on Hillary Clinton and establish a lead Obama never surrendered.
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All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.
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The problem is that borrowing money to pay back more borrowed money that will oblige you in the future to borrow even more money doesn't sound kosher. Because it isn't.
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Newt Gingrich is a very intelligent man, if he says so himself.
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Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'
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The 2004 presidential election that saw George W. Bush win with 51 percent of the vote was the last one Republicans will ever win with the overwhelmingly white and male coalition they have now.
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Obama's victory in November 2008 was a historic political accomplishment.
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Romney is right that the Obama vision is too centered on government. But his is too centered on the promotion of business and wealth creation at the expense of everything else.