P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

For 50 years, the Republicans have been accusing the Democrats of being soft on national security.

The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here.

The foreign policy of the Democrats is bad for Europe and deadly for Hungary. In contrast, the foreign policy of the Republicans and proclaimed by presidential candidate Trump is good for Europe and means life for Hungary.

Republicans always try to paint Democrats as weak on defense. This time, they can't. After all, Mitt Romney's idea of an overseas accomplishment is sending U.S. jobs there.

Many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview.

It has become starkly apparent to me that we lack any sort of strategic foreign policy view, and when I say 'we,' I mean the country in general, but in particular, the Republican Party.

In 2012, when Mitt Romney named Russia as our greatest geopolitical foe, Democrats scoffed and accused Republicans of trying to ignite a new Cold War.

The Republican Party is the party of national security. There's hardly a national security wing of the Democratic Party anymore. So if we turn away from it, that'll be a big problem.

You've got the brain-washed, that's the Democrats, and the brain-dead, that's the Republicans!

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.

Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity.

As a general rule of thumb, Democrats do better in national elections when the year's defining issue is economic fairness, and Republicans do better when the defining issue is national security.

It seems to me the American people never really forgave the Democrats for being right about Vietnam.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

The Reagan Administration, generally regarded as having conducted the most successful Transition of modern times, had managed during the election campaign to build bridges to the Democrats in some areas, notably foreign and national security policy.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.

America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad …. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being…. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.

Republicans are the party of the rich. The Democrats are the party of the people.

It is dangerous to permit conscienceless party politics to proceed to a point which does not hesitate to drag foreign politics and relations to a point with a great neighboring country into the vortex of partisan strife.

You cannot let America’s destiny be determined by a bunch of foreign journalists.

We do not want to tie ourselves ... to the United States, because she is unreliable ... and her statesmen do not know the mind of their own country.

The Constitution is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.

The United States is the world's best hope; but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence.

The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology

James Forrestal is the most dangerous man in America. If he is not removed from office, he will cause another world war.