Eliot Spitzer Quotes

We tried two moderate Republican candidates, McCain and Romney, and we lost both times.

The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.

Obama ran a hard-edged and negative campaign against Romney, hoping to convince recession-weary voters that his rival was unworthy of the job.

As the Republicans run to the crazy Tea Party right, they leave behind the huge mass of genuinely moderate and independent Americans that make up the majority of voters. The ones that used to consider themselves now-extinct moderate Republicans. They're up for grabs. And the Democrats have to grab them!

Unfortunately, the genuine relationships and friendships that some of us have developed across the aisle in recent years does not translate into a willingness to seek compromise, consensus, or middle ground on the major challenges facing our state. The extreme ideology of the self-styled Tea Party legislators in Arizona absolutely rules the day.

We must stop the Tea Party before the United States Senate falls into the hands of extremists and ideologues who leave no room for reason or compromise, who don't recognize common ground even when they're standing on it.

A left-wing idiot is as dangerous as a right-wing idiot.

The victor will be the one who gets the most voters out.

George McGovern and his supporters committed what, in a two-party system, are capital crimes: they did not compromise, they took hard ideological positions, they alienated a large portion of their party's traditional supporters, and they lost - very, very badly.

The rise of the Tea Party, along with the emergence of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Carl Paladino in New York and Ron Paul in Kentucky, is not the first time in American history that voters have responded to hard economic times by supporting angry, unorthodox Senate and gubernatorial candidates.

There is ample evidence that participation in an electoral process forces any party, regardless of ideology, to moderate its position if it wants to attract voters in large numbers.

In politics, familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds votes.

Centrist voters typically decide general elections, so hard-left or hard-right platforms don't help.

Influencing voters is the crux of all poll campaigns.

Left-wingers and right-wingers come together when they become extreme enough. The Nazi Party was called National Socialism, very similar to Stalin's Communism, with the addition of 'the Fatherland.'

Richard Nixon said it best. It makes no difference whether they hold your nose or whether they go would through a wall to vote for you. It counts the same with the X.

To hear the Conservatives issue a command that all Leave voters must vote Tory, this seems insultingly complacent.

Only in Washington can the pursuit of a conservative agenda, with centrist policies, be depicted as liberal reform.

I received endorsements from Tea Party to moderates alike. And I think that's unique, and that's something I'm proud of.

I'm fiscally conservative but socially moderate. A moderate Republican - there just aren't many of us left.

What's worse: a president who is very faithful to an ideology that you find extreme, or a president who is very cynical and appears to have no ideology at all? Neither one of those things is great.

Voters seem to enjoy voting for what experts believe they won't vote for.

The PRI portrays itself as the force of the center, of stability.

My lesson from history is that if there is a strong moderate centrist party which can lead the country, there is no room for extremists from the right or left.

I believe the regressive Left - the group of people who use illiberal tactics to silence those defending liberal principles - to be the Left's version of the Tea Party.