David Brooks Quotes

I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime ... unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party. And it has to be a transformation. Not a little tweaking at the edges.

The Washington establishment think Republicans win elections by you don't stand for anything, you keep your head down, you don't rock the boat. You know what? Every time we do that, we get clobbered in the polls.

The GOP needs to figure out a way to become more appealing to new constituencies.

I'm fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and I think if I win this campaign that people will take notice and the next time they select a candidate, they will look at the principles.

If the [Republican] party wants to have an ideological debate, it's never going to win anything in a major way.

The Democrats don't like the Tea Party because the Tea Party engineered their defeat. The Republicans, some members, don't like the Tea Party because the Tea Party illustrates what they have to do to win and they're not really comfortable with that.

Constant conflict is actually often good politics. Because the more you can inflame your supporters the more likely they are to show up at election day. And if they're more inflamed than the other side, even if the other side has more people agreeing with it, you'll win, because your crowd will show up.

Republicans woke up Sunday with an undeniable reality. Donald Trump's the clear front-runner now for their party's nomination. Trump, celebrated, of course, his big win in South Carolina.

If the Republican Party continues to have a different message for every different group, they're gonna die. We already have a party that does that, and they own it. It's called the Democrat Party.

The Republican Party is no longer the Republican Party.

[Donald] Trump is winning because people that vote Republican have been let down and disappointed one too many times, and their instinct is being borne out here. The Republican Party is not interested in winning.

The Tea Party thing is only apt in some ways. The activism in the town halls, that looks superficially like it. But what the Tea Party did was, they went after the party, the Republican Party, as their vehicle. And parties is how you change history.

We've got to stop being the stupid party. It's time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults.

The key to winning any general election in the USA is to excite your base and then expand your base - get independent voters and voters who haven't been voting for your party to come to your party.

Franklin Roosevelt ran on a balanced budget in 1932, and the greatest president, certainly, of the 20th century. So the idea that you lay out a predicate right now, Donald Trump has recreated the Republican Party in his image.

Donald Trump didn't have a polling operation until very late in his campaign. How did he know what to do? That the Ted Cruz people leaked their polls to Trump because they were looking forward to eliminating all the other rivals, clearing the way for a Cruz-Trump fight that they were certain Cruz would win. In the end, Cruz was the last man standing, it's true. If he had known at the beginning what he knew at the end, he might have thought twice. The Congressional Republican Party thought they could make Trump their tool to impose their very unpopular agenda. Instead, they became his tool.

Isn't it just heart-stopping and mind-numbing when you stop and realize that the Republican Party doesn't want to win?

The democrats are a coastal party.

The Republican Party cannot win the White House anymore with just conservative and Republican votes.

Tainting the Tea Party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There's no evidence that Tea Party adherence are any more racist than other Republicans and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats in November, having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

The Democratic Party is no longer the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party clearly is not interested in winning. And if you want to be even more specific than that, it is paramountly obvious that they're not even interested in defeating the Democrats.

I think there's something remarkable happening here that nobody is talking about. They're skirting the issue. For the longest time, the Republican Party has told us that they can't win with just Republican votes. And that's why they support amnesty. That's why they support the Democrats on many of their issues to go out and get Hispanics or other minorities.

We want...as soon as possible to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of pro-family Christians by 1996.

If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin.