Bob Woodward Quotes

I do think that the Republican Party is in a crisis right now, a crisis of confidence about who we are.

I think the best thing that can happen to the Republican Party is that it is identified as a party organized around a set of principles, ideals and ideas for our future.

I think the Democratic Party has got to make fundamental choices.

The base of our party is commonsense conservatives.If the Republican Party gets back to that base, I think our party's going to be stronger and there's not going to be a need for a third party.

The tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn't remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.

The Republicans in Congress, they believe in Ronald Reagan's Republican Party, not Donald Trump Republican Party or Steve Bannon's Republican Party.

The great unknown in this country is where this leaves the Republican Party after this election. Will it be the party of the Kochs or will it be the party of [Donald] Trump?

If the Republican Party continues to have a different message for every different group, they're gonna die. We already have a party that does that, and they own it. It's called the Democrat Party.

I want to be clear that when you mention the Republican critique of President Obama, that is not President-elect Trump's critique, right? So you have a real clash within the Republican Party, and I think within the Trump administration, about how to develop policy toward Russia.

I think is interesting is that term is so pejorative or understood to be so pejorative and there's a real difference between how Republicans, it seems to me, think of that and how Democrats do. I don't think Democrats feel as negatively about the Democratic Party establishment as Republicans do feel about their party's establishment.

I went to my first national convention in 1976, when my family supported [Ronald] Reagan over [Gerald] Ford, so we've always been Republicans, but we've always wanted the Republican Party to be the party of fiscally conservative, limited-government types. And I think, sometimes, we haven't done that as well.

When you have the most votes of anybody that tells you where the party is. I think the party got lost to a certain extent.

I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.

However, there will be a Republican Party platform that will coalesce around their convention. Unless I miss my guess, it will be considerably more conservative on these issues, perhaps even than Governor Romney is, and I think that that will give Americans a clear set of choices about all issues, but about women's issues too.

It's going to be Perry, it's going to be Romney...It's sort of a battle for the soul of the Republican Party - and they have no soul, but the space where a soul would be.

I'm convinced Mr. Reagan would never be elected- I don't think his views are held by a majority of the American people...it's the Republican party that's going to be committing suicide by nominating candidates of that genre.

I think the Respublican party's lost its way. We have given into nativism and protectionism. And I think that, if we're going to be a governing party in the future, and a majority party, we have got to go back to traditional conservatism, limited government, economic freedom, individual responsibility, respect for free trade. Those are the principles that made us who we are.

I think that the real future of the American party is to bring in working Americans.

On domestic policy, one of the major stories in American politics has been the growing ideological and political self-confidence of the Democratic Party, and the growing ideological and political pessimism of the Republican Party.

I think the most important thing is the American people have lost trust and confidence in the people they have sent up to Congress as elected leaders. And I think that it is so important to reconnect to the people. And I think that the last election showed people weren't running back to the Republican Party. They did show that they weren't happy with the policies coming out of the Democrat Party. But they are trying to find individuals that will go up and be their voice, that will resemble them, that will take their cares and concerns to Washington, D.C.

Our political parties exist for no other reason than to win power; they are not ideological debating societies designed to present a particular political philosophy and to persuade voters to accept it.

Folks, let me ask you a question about that. You voted in 2010, 2014. You're part of the Tea Party and you show up and you just vote. Republicans said they needed the House, and you gave it to 'em; then they said they needed the Senate, and you gave it to 'em. Do you feel like winners even after those two elections? Probably not, because you really didn't think the Republican Party was going to change their stripes and start acting on all this.

I think the real, fundamental problem that the Republicans have is, 'How do we get meaner, how do we get nastier with immigrants, so that we can take a smaller group,' now apparently led by Senator Cruz - I mean, maybe he's gonna be the next Speaker of the House. Because it's quite clear that Mr. Boehner has no control over this conference.

Policymakers think that if they get the abstractions right, that will drive behavior in the desired direction. But the world happens in real time.

..the real world's all we've got. Believers in the supernatural claim to have special wisdom about the world. But real wisdom means knowing truth from falsehood, knowing the difference between evidence and wishful thinking. Yes, the real world is mysterious and sometimes frightening. But would the supernatural make it better? The real world has beauty, poetry, love and the joy of honest discovery. Isn't that enough?