Tom Fitton Quotes

One of the tragedies of the Bush administration is that we went back to business as usual, make a deal with the Democrats, let's all be friends in Washington philosophy.

The President is hampered at every turn by the necessity of humoring his party.

You know the way Washington works. Once you start floating ideas, they are immediately attacked by all the different interest groups before the ideas can be brought to fruition.

Pity the poor senator or representative trying to stay alive in the political jungle. At every turn, there's a danger: a constituent who actually wants something done. Or worse, a campaign donor who might be offended by that something.

I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.

You think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill? Then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what's going on in Washington, D.C.

I would like Obama to be tougher on going up against the Republicans, I don't think he should try to be so moderate.

There's a huge cost in being bipartisan, a tradition started by Newt Gingrich when he took over the House in 1994 and has continued forward, that you dare not vote against the Republican Party even if you're voting against your own initiatives and your own interests.

If Mr. Obama wants to get things done, he must recognize that in Washington only the president has the power to make the first big move.

As for life within a Legislature,— who can tell how warped and bent and twisted, and accommodated to the exigencies of party struggle become the faculties of belief?

I am doing my best to prevent the corporations and the Republican Party Machine making me the … candidate for the vice presidency in order to get rid of me here as governor.

Nothing arouses the sharks in Congress so much as the smell of failure.

Senator [John] Kerry has been in Washington long enough to have taken both sides on every issue.

I think politicians really go with the tide.

I wasn't looking for a hobby. If I were looking for a hobby, it wouldn't be the United States Senate. That's one of the toughest jobs I'd probably ever do. I just felt there wasn't enough compromise going on: People were too far to the left, too far to the right, with no one trying to build a compromise.

I have, year after year, been named the most bipartisan member of the whole United States Senate. I have proved my independence.

Where I underestimated the opposition was how willing Republicans in Congress would be to put their short-term political interests ahead of what they knew was good for their country. That was extremely disappointing.

When I first came to the Senate, people in both parties went out of their way to have personal relationships.

The last thing I will pay attention to is any of the usual Washington back and forth.

Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch carefully.

Senators who once supported common-sense legislation have gone silent as stones under the threat of the polluters' spending.

Politics in Washington is a contact sport. But it shouldn't be a personal animosity sport.

One of the problems the Republican Party has had is that we're too fast to compromise. You can compromise on the little stuff, but you can't compromise on your core principles.

I think politics is a reason why a lot of stuff doesn't get done. There's a lot of favors, and a lot of people are held back by their intentions of being re-elected or the things that they owe their party or constituents.

You'll never get progress in Washington until you have a majority, bipartisan majority, that really wants to solve problems.