John Raese Quotes

I try to make a dent in people when I can. I figure people drift toward liberalism at a young age, and I always hope that they change when they see how the world really is.

Friends, there is no Left in American politics.

The conservative movement was told to curl up in a fetal position and just stay there for the next eight years, thank you very much. Well, how things have changed.

Half a century ago, Ronald Reagan, the man whose relentless optimism inspired me to enter politics, famously said that he didn't leave the Democratic Party; the party left him. I can certainly relate. I didn't leave the Republican Party; it left me.

Tectonic shifts in American politics take time—often a long time.

There’s something deeply cultural about changing parties …. radio announcers and journalists can change either newspaper or radio or television stations and footballers can change teams, but there seems to be a deeper cultural thing about the notion of [political] defection, even if you haven’t changed your values along the way.

America is a conservative country with a small “c” - they want change, but they don’t want too much change too fast.

There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of.

The Tea Party has won. There simply isn’t that much difference between the establishment Republicans anymore, and if grassroots chalengers are loosing more races, it’s because they’ve succeeded in yanking the party far enough to the right that there isn’t any more space for them to fill.

I grew up as a Democrat in a very strong Democratic family, but I will tell you that the Democratic Party that exists in this country is not the Democratic Party I grew up around.

I didn't come up through the ranks of the conservative movement... I came to these revelations about my own personal politics in a realm in which those books, those ideas, the canon of conservatism, is nonexistent.

I think that conservatism as we understand it is coming under great strain during the era of Trump.

A generation ago [the Democratic Party] stood for progressive change. Now they defend every federal program as if each were sacred. They have become the most conservative force in American politics.

I was a Democrat for a period of time early on. And then I was also an independent. And then I became a Republican.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

I knew if I waited long enough, the Republican Party would rock.

There is no denying or hiding the fact that over the years I moved from well on the right of the Conservative Party, much much more to its left, and therefore to the centre of the poltical spectrum.

I'm a conservative Republican. I have been since I was 15 years old and participated in the 'Goldwater for President' campaign in 1964.

I was a right winger into the 70's but I left the right in late 70's.

It is one of the truisms of politics that a conservative is often enough a former liberal who has been 'mugged by reality.'

Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.

Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.

There was a time when liberals were linguistically dominant in America.

I used to think that James Kilpatrick and Barry Goldwater were really conservative, but now we’ve got people to the right of them. They want to use government to be punitive.

I was a Republican until they lost their minds.