Bill Kristol Quotes

We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.

Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right

Progressives know there is something very wrong when a nation divided politically has one major network operating as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and 90 percent of talk radio is dominated by right-wing extremists.

I think it's clear to me that what - when I look at the tea party, it's about one-third Democrat, one-third Republican, one-third independents. But 100 percent of them are sure that the agenda that is taking place in Washington, D.C., is about extremism and is about bankrupting this country and every state within this country.

Well, I don't know too many governors who are flaming ideologues.

One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism.

To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.

If there is true evil in the world - it is Republican conservatives.

I mean, the country is deeply divided. There is 35 percent of the people who are Tea Partiers or more in some of those states. So it's probably going to be a difficult year, but there's nothing that I think anyone can do about it.

I believe that the far-right and the far-left can be equally insane - but there's no question that in the first years of the Obama administration, the far-right has been far crazier. In part, this comes from parties being out of power - without the responsibility of governing to ground them, the activists and the ideologues take over.

I'm not, nor is anybody I know in government part of a nasty right wing clique.

A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum - the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us.

Unquestionably, American political rhetoric can be repugnant, and the Right can certainly be as guilty as the Left.

We can't allow ourselves to descend down the rabbit hole of unbridled partisanship for partisan sake.

These days we think our politics are nasty and partisan. But our discourse looks like a Platonic symposium compared with the vicious fighting that marked the early Republic.

I would like to be one of the people responsible for getting Elizabeth Warren out of politics. She's a nightmare. The Left's holding her up as the second coming of Hillary Clinton; Lord knows we don't need the first.

Unlike any other leader in modern American history, we are led today by a president that has decided to pit Americans against each other.

What is polarizing in America is the Democrat Party agenda. What is polarizing and divisive is the Democrat Party agenda and the things they have been trying to do.

Her nomination for vice president in 2008 represents the most desperate inclinations of the Republican Party. In two hundred years, I suspect historians will use Palin as an example of how insane America became in the decade following the destruction of the World Trade Center, and her origin story will seem as extraterrestrial and eccentric as Abe Lincoln jumping out of a window to undermine a voting quorum in 1840.

By pumping up hyper-partisanship, our country (America) is playing with forces that can easily get out of control. We are giving purpose and cover - and sometimes a sense of purpose - to the crazy among us. We are encouraging a culture of extremism

We have Americans who are voting for someone in whom they have confidence, about whom they have hope, because at after the election 2016 whoever wins is going to have to govern. And when you look at the tenor of this campaign, and when you look at the way people feel about these candidates and how partisan our country is for starters, how does the winner govern? I mean that's the real, real problem.

Unfortunately, in the world today, we have dogmatic people entering into politics. I don't think the two mix.

I think the political process has degenerated into name-calling and extremism, and I think that that's unfortunate.

The Democrats, the left have become a giant hate group. There is no reason in these people. This is pure, 100 percent corrupt, evil politics, or worse, that governs their thinking, their day-to-day thinking. If they're having an outdoor barbecue - wait. They wouldn't. That's climate change causing. Whatever these people do.

The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in the election and it's changing the conversation.