Fred Barnes Quotes

I think the Right did us a service calling Obama a socialist for eight years. It inoculated us.

Obama has been attacked repeatedly for not wearing a flag pin, with Republicans claiming that his patriotism is in question. It's all a bit silly.

If Romney would go ideological in explaining Obama, it would help. We gotta stop the, 'He's a nice guy' stuff. Nice guys don't do what Obama is doing. Nice guys don't say and do and act the way Obama is saying, doing, and acting.

I've always believed in challenging Republicans where they think they are strongest.

For eight years Republicans worked around the clock to delegitimize Bill Clinton. For the next eight years, Democrats tried to delegitimize Bush. Now Barack Obama is enduring the rage of his conservative opposition.

I am not predicting here that Obama will fail like Jimmy Carter. What I am predicting is the Republican Party is not extinct and will after a period of time become a strong opposition party.

Our adversaries - our Democratic adversaries - like to be able to portray the Republican Party as a bunch of wingnuts - narrow based, always have some agenda that's not attractive to the public... That's easier for them, and more fun, than dealing with their own problems. And I think their problems are significant.

The Republicans ought to be nowhere near trying to help Obama save his bacon. But they don't think that's what they're doing, I'm convinced. You talk about trauma and the need for therapy, I really think that the Republicans have been genuinely psychologically traumatized by decades of media criticism.

When it comes to conservative social issues, it saddens me when sometimes my fellow Republicans duck and cover in the face of pressure from the left. Our loudest opponents on the left are never going to like us so let's quit trying to curry favor with them.

Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the Left.

I think reconciliation is Obama's goal - but the fight with the Republicans is like a fight with pit bulls, they never let go. Even worse, now the Republicans feel they can keep pushing and he will keep giving. They have not seen a stiff resistance on his part.

If Republicans triumph in 2014, it will undoubtedly be as a result of Obamacare. In 2010, Republicans soared to historic victory because the much-maligned Tea Party spearheaded mass resistance to Obama's takeover of the healthcare industry.

No day passes without a Democratic politician, a left-wing commentator, or, if I may be excused a redundancy, a left-wing academic labeling Republicans and conservatives racist.

The fact that Obama is getting criticism from the left and the right might reflect his understanding of the underlying political dynamics.

Again, if I was going to call Romney and the Republicans stupid, I'm certainly not going to call the Democrats and President Obama stupid.

Obama is a guy who claims to be unaware that there was a Tea Party, a guy that's detached from the country.

Republicans have said much worse things about me than any Democrat ever has.

I have yet to see someone attack Obama over his report card. A lot of people I talk to from both sides of the fence are like, 'Well, what about this economy? What about these incidents?' There are still no answers except time, but time is the answer for everything.

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.

Just because everybody else is engaged in a group hug with Barack Obama doesn't mean that somebody doesn't have to tell the truth.

Texas Democrats should be more concerned about what President Obama is doing to destroy the party, and the nation, than about what I am doing in going after him for that.

We have Democrats saying dumb things every single day, and Republicans as well.

We need to be calling out the flaws and misguided decisions of the Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration.

Informed opponents of Obama's healthcare initiative have expressed dismay at the low level of discourse.

You know I don't think we need the Republicans to steal family values from us.