Arlen Specter Quotes

He changed his position on virtually everything. I'm a moderate Republican, that's what I am, so I'd be inclined to support someone like Mitt Romney. But all those changes give me pause.

I see some parallels between then [Lincoln's era] and now. Certainly the division of ideologies between two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In 1865, the Democrats were the Conservatives and the Republicans were the progressives, and today it's just the opposite.

The problem is the Democrat Party is not Bill Clinton's party anymore.

Trump's overriding accomplishment is plain: The Republican Party can no longer be shamed.

Kentucky has long been Democratic at the state level but that trend had completely reversed in the Trump era.

The real problem with the Republican Party is that for decades it has shifted constantly to the right politically. Consequently, the Republican Party is picking up a very different demographic than it used to, a less well-educated demographic of people who are more prone to authoritarianism.

Now Republicans are a more interventionist party than they have been at any time since George W. Bush left office.

This year [2016] we're seeing a really strange upending [of the party]. The money was coming from these super-wealthy donors who were really on the far, hard right, people like the Kochs. So the party and the candidates moved so far to the right that a lot of people who don't share their point of view were unhappy.

Donald Trump supporters are as opposed to Hillary Clinton and probably more so than the Republican Party establishment is.

I have this belief that Donald Trump keeps floating the idea that he will quit the party and run as an independent if the Republican Party does not treat him fairly.

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 base of our party is commonsense conservatives.If the Republican Party gets back to that base, I think our party's going to be stronger and there's not going to be a need for a third party.

Forty percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, 36% independents, and 20% liberal. And these independents are abandoning the Democrat Party in droves. And a key point, they're abandoning the Democrat Party without the Republican Party giving them any reason to go to them. They're just abandoning the Democrats because they don't like what they see.

A generation ago [the Democratic Party] stood for progressive change. Now they defend every federal program as if each were sacred. They have become the most conservative force in American politics.

If you think about conservative ideas, conservative principles, the fact that Donald Trump goes back at George W. Bush over weapons of mass destruction or gets into fights with the pope, and there's no outreach in terms of growth of the party. I think lots of people fear for the future of the party.

I want to see a Republican Party that is a big tent, inclusive party that welcomes all people to be Republicans and to contribute their ideas and support our position of providing opportunity to the American people. And I believe he goes in the opposite direction and deepens the divisions that are so pervasive in our society today.

The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.

The Republican Party is the party of national security. There's hardly a national security wing of the Democratic Party anymore. So if we turn away from it, that'll be a big problem.

I just don't understand how anyone would want to be a Republican. I just can't figure it. I don't understand. If you're poor, if you're any kind of minority - gay, black, Latino, anything. If you're not a rich born-again-Christian, I don't get it.

His [Donald Trump]support is crossing wide swaths of the party. It's not just the evangelicals. It's the moderates, as well.

[Donald] Trump, I think, understands it. He has said this is going to be a new Republican Party, a workers' Republican Party, instead of just the elite Republican Party.

I think is interesting is that term is so pejorative or understood to be so pejorative and there's a real difference between how Republicans, it seems to me, think of that and how Democrats do. I don't think Democrats feel as negatively about the Democratic Party establishment as Republicans do feel about their party's establishment.

Under Donald Trump, you know, we've seen the foundation of the Republican Party move into the Democratic Party, so Donald Trump, I think, will have a lot of trouble moving things through Congress.

The Republican Party is no longer the Republican Party.

The Republicans went so far to the right that they just can't get votes. They've become a dedicated party of the very rich and the corporate sector.