Jon Stewart Quotes

I wonder... if the Republican Party really wants to be branded right now as the party of tax cuts and torture? I mean that's what they're selling.

I think the Reagan people are superb marketers. Their whole approach to polling, to television, to the symbolism and the rest approaches genius.

Tim Kaine didn't come across authentic. It wasn't good. And it was - it just really - I think, for short-term benefit, I think the Democrats tarnished the brand, which is an awfully good brand.

I understand that Republicans-running-against-Obamacare-in-order-to-save-Medicare is a clever jujitsu. But how long will they play out that argument before they get back to the economy?

The Democratic party of Florida has put a temperance plank in its platform and the Republican party of every state would nail that plank in their platform if they thought it would carry the election.

It would be unwise for the modern Republican Party to come across as hostile to immigration. That has been the losing position in American history for 200 years.

Did I say that the President's entire job is image management? Of course not.

If it were the Clinton people, they'd be sitting around figuring out how to pull themselves out. Instead the president is continuing to go around the country and peddling Social Security, which the needle is not moving on.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

The most successful politicians are the ones who embrace their best traits while turning their liabilities into loveable attributes. And yet, many a candidate tries to run as something they aren't simply because the strategy dictates it.

The opposition tried to brand us as the 'Ground Zero megamosque.' The language was deliberately wordsmithed in order to arouse hostility against us. But the idea that the Jewish mayor of New York City and the president of the United States supported a mosque at Ground Zero, and took a lot of flak for it, raised their stature in the Muslim world.

I expect the Republicans will enjoy a large bounce out of their convention. They're here wrapping themselves in the 9/11 flag, which I think is inappropriate in many ways, but it's their choice.

Republicans are completely befuddled by Obama's 'star power' and don't seem to have a clear or effective strategy to compete.

You can’ t be a national party in America and be perceived as an anti-immigration party.

Democrats are just very poor, in general, at explaining what it is when they accomplish something. I think that they are pretty bad at it. Republicans are very good at it…. Democrats like to pick each other apart.

The Republicans always looked bad three years out of four. But the year they look good is election year.

Some want to rebrand the GOP, but they will never rebrand conservatives.

One of the frustrations of the Republicans is that they have been mostly unsuccessful in equating the word Clinton with Mafia, which, to them, seems so head-smackingly obvious.

A campaign adviser can change the outside appearance of the candidate, but the ideology and personality of the candidate remains the same.

Gimmicks belong almost anyplace except a Republican presidential primary.

There's a line of thinking about Ted Cruz.

The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC [End Poverty in California]. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.

The white backlash has been at work for a long time. It's been part and parcel of the Republican Party for the last 25 years or so, and it's been highly successful up until Barack Obama was ingeniously able to come up with strategies to deal with it.

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.

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.