Elizabeth May Quotes

You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.

Tainting the Tea Party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There's no evidence that Tea Party adherence are any more racist than other Republicans and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats in November, having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

I think that Donald Trump has capitalized and prayed on people's fears.

I figured out Karl Rove's political strategy -- make gas so expensive, no Democrats can afford to go to the polls.

When George Bush used the Willie Horton ad, he knew what he was doing.

I think most of America is seeing the strings behind the campaign, and sees the crass political maneuvers that people are making. I mean, they're extremely apparent to me.

Common sense is no match for political opportunism.

In a close election no one is going to pass up an opportunity to mix politics with a little sex.

We basically ran the Henry Bellmon campaign.

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.

Trump was doing very well on a model that made sense, but now, as the campaign has gotten to the end stages, a more traditional campaign has to take place.

Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.

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

The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they're not liberals.

The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate.

Spin is overrated. It is strategy, not spin, that wins elections.

It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.

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."

If you don't have a record to run on, you paint your opponent as someone to run from.

The more people that are out of work, the better for the Democrat Party. I know you might snicker at that, but it's the damn truth.

We've got to be willing to lose the primary in order to win the general election.

I think Donald Trump is a pragmatic sort of populist and who tell people anything in any moment that he wants them to hear, if he thinks that it's going to be to his advantage, that everything is going to reset in the general election, assuming that he is the nominee, and I think it will be interesting to watch how many people feel betrayed or conned with the game he played with the Republican Party at this point.

Demagogues always do well in economic downturns.

The golden rule has no place in a political campaign.