Karen Hughes Quotes

The Republican Party is an empty vessel unless we imbue it with values.

I think really that you shouldn't run as a conservative if you're not.

I'm going to speak my mind. I'm going to defend conservatism as I understand it. I'm going to defend our ideas as the Republican Party.

The Tory party is at is strongest when it is in tune with the hopes and aspirations of Britain's hard-working, law-abiding majority, and when it governs through clear Conservative principles.

I think what I'm trying to do, reform-wise, is completely consistent with conservative philosophy. It may not be consistent with some so-called conservatives who live in Washington and make their living like I used to.

The job of conservatives is to keep the Republican Party driving on the right-hand side of the road. There are many ways we do this. We argue, we publish, we lobby, we campaign for conservative candidates. Another thing we do is, when the GOP goes off the rails on really key issues - size of government, the National Question, Wilsonian adventures - we stay home on election day.

The Republican - conservative Republican answer has always been when we lose it's because we're not ideological enough. If they lose midterm elections, that's why. If Obama defeats McCain and then Mitt Romney, it's because those two Republican candidates were not ideological enough.

In no way, shape, manner, or form could the conservative movement or a conservative, a Burkean conservative could never, ever vote for some low-life like Donald Trump. It might affect their fundraising, which they need. It might affect their cruises, which they need. There could be any number of reasons for it, but in their minds it's rooted in principle.

I continue to vote against such spending increases, but sometimes I think some of my Republican colleagues forgot that we were sent here to shrink the federal government, not to grow it.

Sarah Palin may have chosen to not answer the call for the presidency, but make no mistake, the principles that garnered her the unique support she enjoyed continue to inform and drive the base that lifted her.

I think when you look to the future what you'll find is that the Republican Party is building a bigger party base on stronger values.

If we're going to win in 2016, we need a consistent conservative: someone who has been a fiscal conservative, a social conservative, a national security conservative.

Naturally, I'm conservative; I'm a Republican. I always was.

I believe that this is the key, the principle itself is the key to conservatism. Because in many ways if you do not have a principled base you do not have policy and if you do not have policy in many ways you do not have an ideology.

I'm an independent conservative. And what I mean by that - when I think we're right, I'm with us all the way, and I am a conservative. And I think my record reflects that.

The Republicans have lost their standards; they've lost their principles... Really, that's why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me... They have never really gone along with lower taxes and less government.

When I say I'm an authentic conservative, it's because when you look at who I am and where I come from, it'd be a lot easier to have grown up a Democrat.

In Texas, conservative policies win over stabbing fellow Republicans in the back.

I am a joyful conservative, unafraid to articulate big ideas with an optimistic smile.

Primaries are a family fight. I'm a pro-free enterprise, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life Republican.

If the Democratic Party is to win in November, it will have to fly with both its wings—the liberal and the conservative.

We are now, as we always have been, decidedly and conscientiously attached to the Tory, and which might with more propriety be called the Conservative, party.

It is very difficult to be a Tory intellectual.

You make a good politician, but you've got to develop a philosophy.

George W. Bush is conservative but he is not a conservative.