Lee Atwater Quotes

President Obama has been attacking relentlessly. In 2008 he said that if you're out of fresh ideas you use stale tactics against your opponent - you try and make your opponent unacceptable and that's what he is trying to do.

The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.

If you really want to diminish a candidate, depict him as the foil of his handler. This is as old in American politics as politics itself.

Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office.

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.

It's not a smear, if you please, if you point out the record of your opponent.

Negative politics in a primary campaign produces damaged goods but you've got to do what you've got to do.

[In a political contest,] the first guy who defines the other, wins

The Republican leadership thinks the best way to avoid losing elections is to let the Democrats win every controversial issue.

Everybody in this race is against Obama, okay? So saying you're against Obama, against Obamacare, all the rest, it's all fine, well and good, except it doesn't move you forward.

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

Political consultants are pugilists, masters in the dark art of negativity. Which is why it's surprising to hear Democrats such as Steve McMahon and Republicans like Rich Galen urging their presidential candidates to be more, well, positive.

I suppose politicians have always wanted to get re-elected, but there's a kind of a feeling now that if you just discredit your opposition, it makes it easier for you to win. I don't think that's necessarily true.

You've got to speak; you've got to be able to articulate the Republican message to the American people and take that fight to the president, but you also have to bridge internally.

Somehow politicians have become convinced that negative campaigning pays off in elections.

If you're going to try to win an election, you can't be 80 percent. You can't say, I'm for what my Democratic opponent is, for but not quite so much of it.

Democrats tend to think of elections as cycles. Republicans don't: It's ongoing and constant.

The fundamental goal of Republicans and Democrats is to get themselves re-elected.

Newt Gingrich had to work hard - getting Republican candidates to sign the Contract with America - to nationalize the election that swept Republicans to victory in 1994. A Democratic anti-Tea Party campaign would do that for the Republicans - nationalize the election, gratis - in 2010.

There's a reason people run negative ads... it's because they work.

Just a few months ago in the Republican primary Mitt Romney said to his opponents, who he was crushing at the time, stop whining. And I think that's a good message for the Romney campaign. Instead of whining about what the Obama campaign is saying, why don't you just put the facts out there and let people decide rather than trying to hide them.

There's so much mudslinging going on, and people get so turned off by that. It seems like neither party is aware of that. They're too concerned with blasting each other.

Have we come to the point where the Democratic Party needs a Republican President?

Elections are about fucking your enemies. Winning is about fucking your friends.

We used to try and make fools out of our political opponents. Now we try and make criminals out of them.