Olympia Snowe Quotes

I think the Republican Party should be a pro-life party. I am pro-life. I do not apologize for that. On the flip side of that coin, the Republican Party has been big enough to allow pro-choice advocates to be heard.

I think the Republican party should be a broad party.

Democrats are a big-tent party. You know, I'm not trying to impose an ideology on all, you know, several hundred members of Congress.

I'm pro-choice and those things, but I typically vote Republican.

I'm proud of the fact that the Republican Party is the pro-life party on the issue of life.

We are not trying to limit debate, but we want the platform to support the President's [George W. Bush] position on everything possible, especially a high profile issue like abortion.

I am a proud moderate republican. But I like democrats as well.

Tea Party sympathizers are more conservative on abortion policy than typical Republicans.

All political parties, if they are to be successful, have to be broad churches.

I want to be a representative of what I hope will be a future bigger and broader Republican party.

A lot of people like me who worked in Republican politics had a personal set of beliefs on issues that were at variance with the candidates that we worked for.

I won't use abortion as a litmus test with a pro-choice individual. Someone that is an activist on the abortion issue, I think, goes outside the pale, and I cannot support an activist on the abortion issue.

I'm a Democrat, but I'm really bipartisan - some people might say nonpartisan.

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?

I come to urge my party to be open to debate and discussion; to move away from a lock-step litmus test which advocates abortion on demand in an effort to reach a broader national consensus.

I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.

I think it's very important to always make sure that you're talking to the entire coalition and to as many Americans as possible; not to go chasing after one little group or another. The Democrats would bring new groups into their party and not notice that larger groups are going out the back door.

Right-to-life groups won't fund us because we're Democrats.

Electing pro-choice Republican women can help foster a discussion that reflects the full spectrum of views and can lead to a more balanced and responsible public dialogue.

Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words 'abortion' or 'tax hikes' pass their lips.

Ronald Reagan never did much to make abortion illegal. He did, however, deliver videotaped greetings, fulsome in praise for his hosts, to antiabortion rallies on the Mall.

Republicans are definitely pro-birth - they'll do everything they can to make sure that that baby comes out, regardless of how it got in, but are they pro-life? Can you be pro-life and vote to cut funding that supports the life of a child?

The Republican party is not inflamed, as some would fain have the country believe, against the South. Its borders are wide enough for all truly loyal men to find within them peace and repose from the din and discord of angry faction.

I tell you why I don't think I will ever vote for a Democrat, if I may say so. Because for me, the number one issue is right to life, and I don't think the Democrats are very good on the right-to-life issue.

You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.