Harry Reid Quotes

The Right-wingers everywhere take themselves too seriously, whether in the U.S. or the U.K. And, by the way, so does the Left. The Left can take itself a little too seriously as well.

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

When the Tea Party comes to town, compromise goes out the door.

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.

You do not compromise with the right wing of the Republican party.

I was raised a Republican but I don’t recognize a once proud party that has been hijacked by extremists who are driving it off the flat earth that they pretend we are living on.

People at the political extremes have an advantage over the rest of us. Only they seem to know exactly who and what is wrong with America and precisely what policies and programs should be adopted to fix it.

With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the Tea Party.

I think it's clear to me that what - when I look at the tea party, it's about one-third Democrat, one-third Republican, one-third independents. But 100 percent of them are sure that the agenda that is taking place in Washington, D.C., is about extremism and is about bankrupting this country and every state within this country.

It's a sad commentary on where politics is today. If someone disagrees with you, you're either Attila the Hun or a leftist liberal.

I mean, the country is deeply divided. There is 35 percent of the people who are Tea Partiers or more in some of those states. So it's probably going to be a difficult year, but there's nothing that I think anyone can do about it.

The two parties are still more polarized than ever before and the rise of partisan media is an important reason for it.

I have equal contempt for both left and right radicals.

George W. Bush … was ideologically obsessed.

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

Well, I don't know too many governors who are flaming ideologues.

Americans have grown impatient with the relentless politicizing of every area of life.

You've got the brain-washed, that's the Democrats, and the brain-dead, that's the Republicans!

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.

The Democratic party has gone so far to the left that people just can't relate to it anymore and the Republican party is trying to go totally to the right.

As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum.

There's a huge cost in being bipartisan, a tradition started by Newt Gingrich when he took over the House in 1994 and has continued forward, that you dare not vote against the Republican Party even if you're voting against your own initiatives and your own interests.

The Republican and Democratic parties have accomplished an amazing feat with the red state/blue state paradigm. They've convinced everyone that regardless of how bad they are, the other guy is worse.

It is amazing that the wisdom of the chattering class to the Republicans is always, always, always 'Surrender your principles and agree with the Democrats.' That's been true for my entire lifetime.

I believe that the far-right and the far-left can be equally insane - but there's no question that in the first years of the Obama administration, the far-right has been far crazier. In part, this comes from parties being out of power - without the responsibility of governing to ground them, the activists and the ideologues take over.