Daniel Pfeiffer Quotes

I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.

When most presidents get in, they move to the center because they realize that this is a centrist country - even Reagan.

Bipartisanship may be abnormal, but it does occur. The challenge is to explain why it occurs at all, and why it never lasts.

My definition of bipartisanship is Democrats agreeing with Republicans

My Republican compatriots do not feel that people ought to work with Democrats across the aisle—Compromise is a bad word.

I am a Republican who is prepared to compromise—and contrary to the current misconceptions, compromise is not a capitulation of one’s principles

The middle in Congress is gone now. That is where we got most things done.

The Democratic Party needs to look carefully at moving towards the middle, where the American people are.

What the 1990s taught the Clinton veterans was that you could 'triangulate' with a GOP-controlled Congress.

I say Republicans aren't right all the time. Democrats aren't wrong all the time - now, maybe most of the time, but not all the time.

We must govern from the middle, or we will not be able to govern at all.

I believe in operating in the big middle of the electorate and not being to the far right or the far left. I think you get so much more done.

We need to punch back against the extremes of both the left and the right and define the terms of the debate ourselves.

Goodness knows, we have horrible problems to face in this Congress. I hope we can face them as colleagues in working unitedly for the people of this country and certainly not indulging in animosity or referring to each other as ''enemies.''

In Congressional legislating, most of the game is played between the 30-yard lines. The great forces of inertia and compromise … in the past have frequently pushed liberal and conservative players toward the middle of the field.

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

The best position the government could assume would be that of moderation between opposite extremes of Ultra-Toryism and Radicalism

As far as party primaries are concerned, both Republican and Democratic Party primaries are dominated by the most zealous voters, whose views may not reflect the views of most members of their own respective parties, much less the views of those who are going to vote in the November general election. In recent times, each election year has seen each party's nominee selected - or at least subject to veto - by its most extreme wing and then forced to try to move back to the center before the general election. This can only undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of the candidates of both parties.

You used to get legislation done by getting the moderates to agree. But we have no moderates now so it doesn’t get done

We are there to be an opposition to the Democratic philosophy and the only way to do that is through confrontation.

If you really want to get something done in Washington, it has to be done in a bi-Partisan way.

At the end of the day, Democrats go out and appeal to 30 percent of the far left; Republicans go out and appeal to 30 percent of the far right. Hey, there's a big middle ground here that's not represented. I think that, Bill Weld and myself, I think the Libertarian Party really occupies that ground.

I'm not someone who thinks Republicans are always wrong and Democrats are always right.

The only way Democrats can govern in this country is by making common cause with moderates and independents.

I will do everything to make sure you never have reason again to vote for extremes.