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There's a huge cost in being bipartisan, a tradition started by Newt Gingrich when he took over the House in 1994 and has continued forward, that you dare not vote against the Republican Party even if you're voting against your own initiatives and your own interests.
The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party.
Prodded by the needs of the Union cause, the Republican Party created a strong national government that educated young men and gave them land to farm. Ultimately, the GOP abolished slavery, then gave freedmen the vote so they could protect their own economic interests.
Once the religious right got their beachhead in the Republican Party in 1980, they expanded it. Even Barry Goldwater was extremely hostile to the religious right, but Reagan catered to them. The religious right then expanded their base and that drove the moderates out.
The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.
When the phonies are expelled from their leadership roles and the Republican Party backs a moderate gubernatorial candidate acceptable to the rank and file with proper financing and the intestinal fortitude to fight the good fight, the rank and file will rejoin the fold.
Again and again as president, Reagan let it slip that he concurred with fundamentalists' belief that the world would end in a fiery Armageddon. This did not hurt him politically. The kind of people offended by such talk had already largely abandoned the Republican Party.
The Mormons' passage from bugbears of the Republican Party to its stalwarts may be analogized to a similar move among middle-class white Southerners, to whom the Republican Party was anathema until the 1970s and '80s, after which it became almost the sole representative.
Economic libertarians and Christian evangelicals, united by their common enemy, are strange bedfellows in today's Republican party, just as the two Georges - the archconservative Wallace and the uberliberal McGovern - found themselves in the same Democratic Party in 1972.
You won't hear the leadership in the Republican Party admit it, but there are many in the House and Senate who know that illegal immigration has to be stopped and legal immigration has to be reduced. We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer.
There's no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there's been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I've always believed in the separation of church and state.
I have serious challenges with Donald Trump and his messaging that is going to make it more difficult for us to bring in minorities, Hispanics, into the party and into our voting base in November. I would be concerned about him carrying the banner for the Republican Party.
But in the right-wing media, they do have a right-wing bias. And they also have an agenda. So their agenda is: we're an adjunct of the Republican Party, and we're going push that agenda every day, and, as you say, brand these stories that help further the right-wing cause.
Trump is playing to an audience of people who think of themselves less as Republicans and more as Americans - moderates, conservatives, and independents - who feel that the Republican Party has completely ignored their priorities and beliefs and insulted them along the way.
The beauty of the tea party movement is that it is independent and thus a true check and balance of the Republican and Democrat parties. It's not a pawn of the GOP, thus untouchable in criticism of the Democrats - I view it as an unattached conscience of the Republican party.
In terms of Republicans, we have got to get to our cohorts in the Republican Party to get them to understand if we are going to get this country to its traditional values... we're going to have to control our borders and manage this huge change in our culture that's occurring.
The Republicans won the women's vote in 2010. It was the first time since Ronald Reagan that the Republicans had won the women's vote. And when you look at the issues that really drove women to the Republican Party, it's been the issues related to the economy, to jobs, the debt.
In the 1880s and 1890s, extremists in the Republican party also threatened the future of the US. Just when it seemed the extremists' control of the government was complete, their political machinations, propaganda, and demonization of their opposition fueled a dramatic backlash.
The Tea Party definitely scored a significant victory with Senator Cruz's election in 2012 and scored victories in some statewide primaries. But to me, as the Tea Party gets stronger within the Republican Party in Texas, the prospect of a blue Texas becomes stronger and stronger.
Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity.
My military service is the thing I'm most proud of, but when I think of everything happening in the Middle East, I can't help but tell myself I wish we would have achieved some sort of lasting victory. No one touched that subject before Trump, especially not in the Republican Party.
Once upon a time, it was the Democrats who claimed to be the party of the working man. No longer. They abandoned the working guy. They slammed the door in their face, and now, it's President Trump and the new Republican Party that is supporting working Americans, blue-collar workers.
We are extremely concerned that early voting totals may have been leaked in Bladen County as reported by 'The Charlotte Observer.' This action by election officials would be a fundamental violation of the sense of fair play, honesty, and integrity that the Republican Party stands for.
The Republican Party of Richard Nixon was called to power in 1968 to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam and restore law and order to campuses and cities convulsed by crime, riots and racial violence. Nixon appeared to have succeeded and was rewarded with a 49-state landslide.
Miramax seems to be showing the same faith in Roberto Benigni's 'Pinocchio' that the Republican Party showed in Trent Lott; the live-action version of Carlo Collodi's fairy tale about the wooden puppet whose only ambition was to be a real live boy was sneaked into theaters Christmas Day.
There's a lot of things we can do to balance out what Obama's done and going forward show the American people the Republican Party can govern. I want a coalition of tea party people, independents, moderate Democrats trying to find a way to move this country forward before we become Greece.
The real problem with the Republican Party is that for decades it has shifted constantly to the right politically. Consequently, the Republican Party is picking up a very different demographic than it used to, a less well-educated demographic of people who are more prone to authoritarianism.
These 21st-century 'teavangelicals,' who represent a considerable segment of the Republican party, are vastly different from their 19th-century forebears. Nineteenth-century evangelicals were concerned with societal ills such as temperance, slavery, the rise of industrialisation and suffrage.
Maybe this is my left-wing conspiracy theory, but the right has re-branded itself as kind of the everyman party: Who's the person you'd rather have a beer with? The Republican Party, even though it's a party of incredible wealth and corporate interests, has hidden behind this everyman quality.
The Democratic Party has taken the black community for granted and said, 'This is the most loyal constituency we have. They're not going anywhere.' But the Republican Party has said, 'That's the most loyal constituency Democrats have. They're not going anywhere. We've got to win without them.'
Well, I think the way to go is civil unions. But I do think when you talk about the Republican Party and the debates that are going on within the Republican Party on a number of issues, what I'm hoping is that they will get to a point where they will work with us on moving forward with this economy.
The Republican Party is doubling down on this trickle-down theory that says, 'Thou shalt concentrate wealth at the very top of our society. Thou shalt remove regulation from wherever you find it, even on Wall Street. And thou shalt keep wages low for American workers so that we can be more competitive.'
If immigration reform passes, it'll be a big victory for sanity - nobody really believes it's healthy for a country to have millions and millions of undocumented noncitizens living in the shadows. But it'll also be a sign that the Republican Party has gotten tired of letting the Tea Party push it around.
Tonight, I want to say to every member of the democratic party, who believes in limited government, in personal opportunity and the united States constitution, and a safe and secure America, come home. To the Reagan Democrats, your party has left you. And the Republican party wants you, we welcome you back.
To the credit of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, people have been expelled or marginalized. Pat Buchanan in the '90s. Ron Paul, Rand Paul in the first decade of this century. Bill Buckley famously expelled the Birchers in 1964. It's been a movement that's tried to maintain its boundaries.
The Texas Republican Party is in many respects like the national party. We have different components that all add value in different ways, whether it's the Tea Party on fiscal questions, whether it's the so-called establishment that's focused on economic development questions, moving states like Texas forward.
Sure, there's a chunk of African-Americans out there who associate the Republican Party with racism, frankly particularly in the Deep South. It's an unfair perception, but it exists. Over a period time, that perception will die away if Republicans are focusing on issues that happen to impact African-Americans.
My attempt is to try to broaden the base of the Republican Party, to try to bring in people that can agree and that can disagree on that, because I think the issues that we face about terrorism, about our economy, about the growth of our economy are so important that we have to have the biggest outreach possible.
More and more political analysts and weak-kneed politicians are advising the historically pro-life Republican Party to abandon its pro-life stance for political gain. My first response is that if you cannot trust a party on the value of defending human life, how can you trust it on issues like marginal tax rates?
If the Republican party essentially becomes the white party, it is going to be the death of it, not only for demographic reasons but for reasons of principle. The party of Lincoln is a party of opportunity for everyone. It's a party about the right to rise, and Mr. Trump unfortunately doesn't represent that view.
I grew up in a Texas where people would say, 'I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.' Now, the reverse is happening. People are leaving the Republican Party because the Republican Party is going too far to the right in Texas. And that's a source of great potential support for Democrats.
Our adversaries - our Democratic adversaries - like to be able to portray the Republican Party as a bunch of wingnuts - narrow based, always have some agenda that's not attractive to the public... That's easier for them, and more fun, than dealing with their own problems. And I think their problems are significant.
Ted Cruz may be an intelligent person, but he doesn't carry out an intelligent debate. He oversimplifies, he exaggerates, and he basically led the Republican Party over the cliff in the fall of 2013. He has shown no qualifications, no legislation being passed, doesn't provide leadership, and he has no real experience.
The Tea Party is almost solely grassroots-based; business interests have almost no grassroots organization. The Republican Party has for too long been run on behalf of business interests who favor candidates the grassroots hate; the minute that those candidates begin to flag, only loyal Tea Partiers stand behind them.
If white people on a larger scale really de-emphasized their whiteness, I think that would have to transform the Republican party into a more responsible party that couldn't get by on just playing into white resentment, especially white middle and working class resentment while taking care of the interests of plutocrats.
It's important that Donald Trump and what he represents - this kind of ethnic, quote, 'conservatism,' or populism - be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party, the Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape, or form.
You can't just have slogans, you can't just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it's going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.
There is no war on women. Women are doing well. But women are thoughtful. And what we in the Republican Party and across the country, Republican, Independents and Democrat women say is we're more thoughtful than a label. We care about jobs and the economy and healthcare and education. We care about a lot of different things.
Conservatism is about the basic rights of individuals. God created us. As far as the government goes, the Founding Fathers based the Constitution off of Christian values. It goes hand-in-hand. As far as the Republican Party? I felt connected to it because individual freedom should not be legislated by the federal government.
In 2008, I spoke out against calling the president a Muslim as if that was a curse. And then in 2012, once again, I was very disturbed about some of the intolerance I was seeing in the party, so I made a statement saying there's a level of intolerance in some parts of the Republican Party. And there was, and I think there still is.