Mike Pence Quotes

I think a primary always makes the other candidate a better candidate because you're battle-tested and you have to think in ways that other people are thinking in addition to your own vision, how to incorporate some fresher, newer thinking into all of that.

I will continue to work with the Republican Party to try to encourage primaries.

I have never understood the Iowa caucus.

Despite what the pundits want us to think, contested primaries aren't civil war, they are democracy at work, and that's beautiful.

Party machinery is not a fortuitous development, but is the direct result of the requirements of practical politics. The necessity of nominating candidates for offices leads inevitably to the development of caucuses and conventions.

If you know the only way to lose your seat is to get out-conservatived in a primary, you'll never let anyone get to your right.

The RNC, per our bylaws, cannot engage in primaries. That is not our role. We actually have a rule that prohibits us from picking a candidate in the primaries.

We are having the 100th anniversary of 2015 year of the first in the nation primary in New Hampshire. And these voters take their responsibility very seriously. They like to kick the tires. They get the most up close and personal look in the entire arc of the campaign at the candidates. And debates are time consuming.

There are so many candidates, so it's very hard to get over that number. It's very unfair, in a we are - but because of the fact that there's so many candidates and so many candidates are grabbing delegates.

The real fight is within the Republican Party to get it to nominate grassroots-type candidates who the public wants, and not just some 'echo' of the other side.

Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.

I will never be able to endorse a nominee for president whose name is not known.

A great many of us have been concerned about the presidential nomination system... whether or not we have drifted into a system that simply doesn't work so well any more.

The good thing about having a Republican primary is that the voters will decide our nominee - unlike the Democrats.

If I'm not the Democratic nominee, I'm gonna get out there and work for whoever the Democratic nominee is, because I believe they will be better than the alternative.

Some people advocate public nomination and a three-track system - allowing voters and political parties to make nominations along with the committee. These people do not want any screening of candidates, but they have not clearly defined the concept of 'screening.'

I'm a Republican. I'm running in a Republican primary.

I strongly favor shortening the campaign season and putting more primaries and caucuses on the same day, preferably regionally.

I've never been a surrogate for Bernie, Hillary, or the DNC.

The main reason we've been the party out of power so long is we haven't had a good nominating process.

We're running in a primary election. What do you do? You go out and seek support. When you're getting support, that's good. When you're not getting support, that's bad.

The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.

I think to understand how the democratic process works is the most important thing, so people don't get frightened by it, and get put off, and give up.

I do not consider myself opposed to any of these Republicans, because any of these people if they were gonna get the nomination are gonna get my vote over Hillary Clinton. I am not in any way, shape, manner, or form trying to damage any of them.

I'm not going to talk about supporting somebody for a long time. I don't know who the two party candidates are going to be.