Fred F. Fielding Quotes

It's very personal in its politics, very bitter and very negative.

The greatest level of hostility and venom, really, is between parties closest to each other on the political spectrum.

A healthy degree of party unity among Democrats and Republicans has deteriorated into bitter partisan warfare.

Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history.

Today, I think the attitude is that governing is not necessarily good politics, and the result is that it's much more partisan and much more divided.

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats.

I don't have the level of vitriol and hatred for the other side as some of my colleagues do.

I get a lot of heat from the Left, which is bizarre. I get a lot of heat from the Right, too, but the vitriol is from the Left.

We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.

Every person of any rank in the left, from voter on up to cabinet member to elected official in the Democrat Party, has contempt. We [Republicans] are the number one enemy. And they will put aside whatever differences they have.

They are the hate group. The Democrat Party, that's their fuel. That's what energizes them is their hate. And for them to sit here and act like they're the most compassionate and tolerant and peaceful and understanding is just a bunch of hogwash. The American people that voted for Donald Trump are hated. The Republican Party is hated. The alternative conservative media is hated.

I'm not a Republican, but I have some conservative views on certain things. I'm not a Democrat, either. It's just very difficult that these people hate each other over a belief. I think it all comes down to ego and competitiveness.

They [Democrats] don't even want us around.

The struggle between right and left rips us apart.

The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.

All I do is convert liberals to conservatism. That's what I do, and that's why they don't like me.

I think there's a lot of folks who believe that this is a time that Democrats have to fight fire with fire. As a guy who ran a fire department, that's not a really good strategy.

If you're a conservative, you think I'm Satan.

Concerned about re-election, interest-group reactions, the media, or fundraising, many legislators have found it in their interest to refuse to cooperate with members of the opposing party - or to treat them as enemies in some kind of war, in which the whole point is to defeat and humiliate them. But the American people have been the real losers.

I would like to be one of the people responsible for getting Elizabeth Warren out of politics. She's a nightmare. The Left's holding her up as the second coming of Hillary Clinton; Lord knows we don't need the first.

The political scenario has gotten so divisive - not only in Washington, D.C., but across the country, too.

There's a lot of bipartisan rancor, a lot of excessive delegation of legislative power from the legislative branch to the executive branch.

Progressive politics in America is an organizational disaster.

Democracy requires common ground on which all can stand, but that ground is sinking beneath our feet, and democracy may be going down the sinkhole with it.

Too often, we see wedge politics and petty rhetoric used to belittle adversaries and inflame partisan divisions.