Jim DeMint Quotes

We shall have to begin all over again. [Taft hoped that] the Senators might change their minds, or that the people might change the Senate; instead of which they changed me.

I think that in the eyes of the nation we both can and will oppose the whole aristocratic party and when the time comes, we shall do it openly … and eventually bring the whole affair into the open.

I believe in health care reform. I don't believe in the way this bill was passed.

My advice to the tea party freshmen: Slow the galloping horses to a trot. Big government was built over decades; it can't be dismantled in a year, especially when Democrats control the White House.

If the House Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they should make their case to the American people and elect a president and a majority in both Houses of Congress prepared to do that.

I am able and willing of my own accord to introduce and maintain such reforms as are calculated to entitle a rulers to the lasting gratitude of his subjects, and encouraging approbation of the paramount power as well as the public at large.

Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means....

If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade... a real change-maker represents a real threat. So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two-dimensional; they're easy to absorb.

In politics, sometimes the best measure of success is the reaction of your enemies.

Some people really expected he could do that, would do that. They're not expecting [Donald Trump] to target Hillary [Clinton], just to clean out the swamp.

If you're campaigning against ObamaCare, but you're also having to defend yourself for closing the government, that seems to take away the asset from you.

If the resistance is going to bring Trump down, it will require Democrats to follow the people, not the other way around. My hope is that the Democrats will realize where their power lies, and will start taking their cues from the people on the ground and not the other way.

I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

On the table, Donald Trump: I'm gonna let Obamacare fail. I am going to let it fail. I am not gonna own this. This is an utter failure, utter disaster. I've tried. I worked with people. Obviously we don't have enough Republicans who want to vote this way. We need more Republicans in 2018, but I'm gonna let it fail 'cause I am not owning this baby. So failure, which is Obamacare, stays in place with all of its problems, expenses, failures versus repealing it. I'm telling you, the most painful choice here is leaving Obamacare in place.

In a democratic society, as Max Weber said, what is possible is only possible because some people have demanded the impossible. The abolitionists helped to create a public discourse in which men like Lincoln become possible. That doesn't mean Lincoln is an abolitionist. It means there is a public opinion out there which is being influenced by antislavery sentiment.

I want to just take a moment to thank the Teabaggers. Thank you so much for helping us pass health care, for resurrecting the Obama presidency. I know they're saying, 'Why are you thanking me? I was so against it, I marched on Washington with tea bags hanging off my Founding Fathers costume, with a gun on my hip and a picture of Obama dressed as Hitler, screaming about his birth certificate.' And America saw that and said, 'I think I'll go with the calm black man.'

Donald Trump has assembled a group of people who know how to, quote, get it done, whatever it is. Now, the left is not gonna be happy with the things they want to get done. And they're gonna continue to oppose it even when they benefit from it, they are going to continue to oppose it, unless Trump comes in with massive tax increases when of course the Democrats will sign on for that.

There's going to be a lot of people that don't like you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead of trying to win them over one by one, you need to do things that are getting huge swaths of votes [in the elections].

I think a lot of people, not all of them, but a bunch of TV people put Donald Trump on television thinking he's making a fool of himself and thinking that he's making a fool of the GOP. I think early on that's what the Republican establishment thought. "Oh, let's hear more of this guy. He's just helping us left and right. He's digging his own grave here."

I came up under [Ronald] Reagan and under [George] Bush, and what are we to do now? We are here to fight. People can run off all they want. But for me, [Donald] Trump is already in the Dominican Republic.

[People] just don't seem to want to give [Donald Trump] any kind of berth at all, let alone a wide berth, to govern.

I do not have much confidence in the political system and never did. My goal has always been to change people's minds because as long as people demand more government, they will get it.

It is incorrect to say there have been no reforms at all in Burma; there have of course been reforms, but we still need to do more for the people. To become a democratic society we have to continually be reforming.

By a 2-1 margin, voters believe that Donald Trump would change business as usual in Washington, but by almost as large a margin, they believe that Hillary Clinton would be better in a crisis and less of a decisive margin she cares about people like them.