Jeff Miller Quotes

As for life within a Legislature,— who can tell how warped and bent and twisted, and accommodated to the exigencies of party struggle become the faculties of belief?

Don't get me wrong, I am a proud Republican, and I want to support my party. I am a firm believer in the Republican principles of smaller government, low taxes and economic freedom. I have spent my time in government service fighting for these principles.

The real problem with big issues like Medicare is that both parties have to be brave at the same time. Every pollster will tell you not to do that to get partisan advantage. Too many people here are willing to deliberately harm the country for partisan gain. That is borderline treason.

When facing the public, politicians constantly filter their ideas through a political sieve. 'How will this affect the environmentalists, labor, management?' Sometimes the sieve gets so clogged by political taboos that no new ideas pass through.

And I'm asking for your support because I want to defend America, as I've said before, from becoming a socialist nation.

Like most Americans, I feel disgusted when we see people make decisions based on party politics rather than a solution that is best for the country.

We're going to have to take the best of the liberal agenda and the best of the conservative agenda and create an American agenda.

I believe that being conservative means you try to get in to the middle of the fight and try to solve the problem.

My experience of American politics is that people raise issues, and they get addressed in an effective but imperfect way. But that's sort of the American system: Mind the problem and worry it, and then we attack it with overwhelming power and put it away - and that's the end of that problem.

I don't think I would be characterized as a Tea Party candidate; I would be characterized as the most effective candidate.

Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore.

"Moderate" Republicans such as Arnold Schwarzenegger like to boast that they're fiscal conservatives and social liberals. But the social liberalism always ends up burying the fiscal conservatism.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

I thought at first I could be completely non-political. Then they told me I had to be part non-political and part political. I found that it was impossible, at least for me. I finally realized there was nothing for it but to be all-political.

What we need to do is bitch-slap the Republican Party. Get those guys heeding too, and if we have to, we’ll take it over to make it a true conservative party,

I feel like my mandate when I was elected was to go reduce the size of government, lower taxes, and increase freedom, and freedom isn't free, and sometimes you have to make a small sacrifice to move forward with what you're after.

After President Obama took office, his campaign book 'The Audacity of Hope' receded into his past fast. Its sweet, naive, bipartisan 'let's reason together' passages fell away, too.

I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government, and a strong national defense.

It was easy for Sanford to have a bully pulpit as governor. It's another thing to be in the trenches, having to face leadership, and say, 'No, that's not a conservative position, that's not what we're doing.'

I think in political life you can only know your position and stay in place, even though people always try to push you to one side.

I'm pretty happy not to be an insider anymore. There's just no common ground. I don't know if it's distrust or that the politics is substantially more partisan than the public. But there's no pressure to make a grand bargain on fiscal matters, on growth, on anything.

I think Republicans make a mistake when they seek to be 'Democrat light.'

I have said before, you don't expect conservative parties to believe in much, but you do expect them to believe in thrift.

If you're a conservative, you think I'm Satan.

The Republicans were not always insane. They might've had politics I didn't agree with, but they weren't always actually certifiable.