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You know, 'Professor Obama' has been a label applied to him by Republicans and Democrats alike. He's a very smart guy. But I think he'd be, you know, better served not to spend so much time trying to impress us with his particular position on an issue and understand that there are things upon which we simply have a disagreement.
Ronald Reagan was long thought to be the most conservative of Republicans. And by any standard today he is the most popular Republican in modern history. Yet he raised taxes 11 times, supported a ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks, and established amnesty for 3 million undocumented workers.
If Republicans are aiming for the heart, for compassion, the last thing they should do is abandon the sanctity of life. Instead, they should tell Americans that they believe in the dignity and value of every human being, from the defenseless unborn child, to the newborn with a disability, to the 90-year-old dealing with dementia.
I believe that if Democrats - not any one Democrat, and certainly not just me - want to start winning races again, Lujan's statement that the DCCC would fund candidates who oppose abortion rights puts our country in danger and makes it all the more likely that the Republicans will continue to defeat us in election after election.
Many Republicans have always reminded me of professional W.W.F. wrestlers. They come into the ring all pumped up and acting like they're invincible and that they're going to destroy their opponent. Then they get hit once and fall down and roll around in agony and suddenly seem immobilized by pain, calling for the ref to intervene.
McCarthyism and Trumpism are very different. They stand for very different things, but the technique of the big lie, smearing and telling lies, you know, McCarthy was doing that. At the time, the media, Democrats, and Republicans were all paralyzed - not all, but most of them were paralyzed. They didn't know how to deal with this.
When the Republicans controlled the House from 1994 -2006, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman Charlie Rangel, John Conyers and Rahm Emanuel weren't saying we need to move right to win. They stuck to their philosophy. And they fought against Reagan and they fought against the Bushes. And eventually they did win.
It's become a cliche to stare in mute horror at Donald Trump's endless stream of Twitter vomit, wondering what chthonic god finds pleasure in watching us writhe as Trump brings out the very worst in his followers and new levels of willful ignorance from Republicans determined to see no evil, no matter how in their face that evil is.
Because the Republicans are never going to turn on Trump so long as he still has his base, and he will continue to have his base so long as this idea that he is standing up for workers, it remains intact. And the only way that that gets eroded is if it isn't just about Russia all the time, but is also about those economic betrayals.
I believe that we are missing a great opportunity. We as Republicans are not really emphasizing what brings us together, and that's conservative values: love of the country. Love of family. Personal responsibility. Hard work. Optimism. Those are the things that we should be communicating to Latinos, and we're doing that very poorly.
In many ways, Trump is both a boon and a bane to Republicans. His insanity and moral decrepitude keep the country focused on things other than the horrible public policies the GOP is attempting to ram through. But because he has no loyalty to anything other than himself, he's much more useful to them as a shiny object than as an ally.
Since losing his reelection in 2002, Barr has lost not only his power but also many of his friends. It doesn't help that after alienating nearly every Democrat with impeachment, he spent the next five years alienating his fellow Republicans - railing against the invasion of Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, and the Bush administration in general.
It is now an article of absolute faith among Republicans that 'the government' is an entity separate from 'the American people,' which they say the same way that the old Jesuits talked about 'the mystical Body of Christ.' It is now an ironclad commandment of conservative orthodoxy that 'the government' is something parasitic and alien.
The Democrats and Republicans need to come together. I've criticized Democrats for their unwillingness to address entitlement reform and Social Security and Medicare. Republicans, on the other hand, never saw a tax that they liked, even when it meant closing tax loopholes. They don't want to in any way support any revenue enhancements.
While I am a Republican, I'm a conservative first and I'm a constitutional conservative, and in Washington some of the Republicans are oftentimes just as much a problem as some of the Democrats, and we need to elect more senators like Senator Rubio and others who will stand proudly as conservatives to do the right thing for our country.
I'm going to guess Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, all want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. I'm sure most people think women should be paid the same as men if they're doing the same job. I think we all want good schools for our kids. If we made that list, we actually are in agreement on more things.
During the Obama years, the Republicans have done an unprecedented amount of stonewalling on cabinet-and-below appointees. I would also argue that their war on judicial nominees has been way beyond what went before. Really, if the president nominated God to serve on the D.C. Court of Appeals, Mitch McConnell would threaten a filibuster.
Instead of following through on their promise to concentrate on jobs, Republicans have attacked seniors, working families, women, and the most vulnerable among us. They have pursued an extreme agenda that would end Medicare as we know it and cut Social Security benefits in order to continue giving tax breaks to Big Oil and millionaires.
I think what both Republicans and Democrats need to do and the leaders on both sides is to recognize that if sequester takes place, it would be disastrous for our national defense and very frankly for a lot of very important domestic programs. They have a responsibility to come together, find the money necessary to de-trigger sequester.
If we do nothing, as the Republicans suggest, we're going to see health care costs reach a point where small businesses can't afford it and families can't afford it. We're going to see people turned down from pre-existing conditions. We're going to find the Medicare doughnut hole - a gap in coverage that's going to hurt a lot of seniors.
If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don't get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.
Trump's more outre economic ideas, like repealing trade bills and implementing a massive surcharge on imports, would seem like non-starters in a Republican-led House and Senate, except when you consider a second point as a kind of syllogism: Republicans fear their angry, white electorate. Their angry, white electorate chose Donald Trump.
I was one of the hardest-hitting conservatives on George W. Bush. Republicans didn't like me on George W. Bush. Republicans still don't like me on many things. If any Republican thinks I've been hard on Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or any of these guys, wait until Mitt Romney gets into office. I'll hold his feet to the fire just as much.
We're going to need to absorb some pain. The Republicans want to pile all the pain on people who can least afford it and the middle class and Democrats under his leadership want to make sure that we can address deficit reduction and continue to make investments and shared sacrifice is going to be imperative in order to be able to do that.
We certainly could have voted on making the middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts for working families permanent had the Republicans not insisted that the only way they would support those tax breaks is if we also added $700 billion to the deficit to give tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. That's what was really disturbing.
The Republicans are not anti-Latinos. You know, I tell the story all the time that the Tea Party is the one that has actually brought out the Latinos. Look at Idaho. I actually ran against a person in my primary who was born and raised in Idaho who happened to be Caucasian, and they elected the guy who was from Puerto Rico with an accent.
I believe that what we should do first and foremost is seal the border. The Republicans and Democrats have both failed on this issue for decades. And one of the reasons why is I don't think we have stabilized the problem by taking credible steps to seal the border. Then let's discuss what we do with the population who is illegally present.
Democrats pride themselves on their commitment to science. Citing climate change, they contend that they are the party of truth, while Republicans are 'denialists.' But with respect to genetically modified organisms, many Democrats seem indifferent to science, and to be practicing a denialism of their own - perhaps more so than Republicans.
Republicans need to stop making assumptions, and they need to start talking to younger people, people of color, and ask them - not talk to them - ask them, 'What is it that we can do better? How do we earn your vote? How do we earn the ability for you to see that we can be the party that will make your life better and that of your children?'
One thing I've learned - and I've said this to Republicans and Democrats - is, bees cannot sting and make honey at the same time. They have to make a choice. Either they are going to be a stinger or a honey-maker, and I contend that honey is a symbol of legislation and, the nuclear language used by members is the stinger, and you can't do both.
I'm a firm believer that if you put together a good product that is just good policy, that is embraced by both sides so that it is seen as politically advantageous to the Republicans or Democrats, that even in this very polarized partisan world that you can advance legislation. I have to believe that, or I wouldn't want to get up every morning.
What Republicans need to do is to go back to their roots - starting with Lincoln - and remind the nation that they are the party of national growth, racial equality and unity of purpose. These Lincolnian themes will serve Republicans - and the nation - much better than becoming the party on the lookout for the supposed rat head of higher taxes.
One must remember that in the '70s, Democrats still grasping for Camelot were desperately pinning their hopes on Teddy while Republicans were doing everything they could politically to turn him into a punch line post-Chappaquiddick. And the idea of Ted Kennedy - rather than the actual man - dominated his political legacy through the early '90s.
It isn't only Republicans, it seems, who traffic in alternative facts. Since Donald Trump's shock election victory, leading Democrats have worked hard to convince themselves, and the rest of us, that his triumph had less to do with racism and much more to do with economic anxiety - despite almost all of the available evidence suggesting otherwise.
Republicans who oppose Obamacare have a responsibility to show that they can do better - not return us to the days when insurance companies alone decided who to cover for what benefits at what price. Otherwise, they should move beyond the repeal fights of the past, accept Obamacare as the law of the land, and work with us to make real improvements.