Bruce Babbitt Quotes

Divisiveness is the only thing that sells today. Comity dies not sell. Civility does not sell.

The political status legislation which emerged in Congress in 1990 and 1991 did not receive the support needed for enactment into law during my tenure as Attorney General.

I am sure that the party system is right and necessary. There must be some scum.

The way you get anything done in the Congress is through coalitions.

Spend most of your time with the people who are against you. Your friends are going to vote for you anyhow.

It's harder to pass a law than stop one.

Do you know what it takes to get a good piece of legislation passed ... one that everyone agrees on? The egos. The turf battles.... It's incredible.

I hate to tell you, but it's not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill

I am a pretty level-headed person, but that person, Harry Reid, has been the most destructive entity in Washington when it comes to civility. By far.

I'll beat up on Republicans and Democrats alike, and they don't like it.

Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.

Republicans stalled Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court because they could, and 136 years of American history recommended it as politically advantageous.

I want to steer the national conversation in the right direction, from my point of view. I want to get under Robert Gibbs' skin and Rahm Emanuel's skin and Barack Obama's skin.

I will continue to ask the president and his subordinates to work with Congress rather than against it.

I'm running against the Democrats. I'm running against evil.

I'm sure that I'd be able to find a lot to disagree on with Eliot Engel.

If you're going to talk about politics, then there are going to be folks who are with you and folks that are against you.

In 2009, 2010, the Obama people were the ones mad at me.

Every time you work on a political campaign, half the people hate you. That's how it is.

I'm not sure whether a person can really gauge the quality of his work by the enemies he's made, but if I somehow upset Hamas and the Taliban and Henry Waxman, I must have done something right.

Standing up to Ahmadinejad is not a partisan issue and should never be one.

There's no way I can run a nonpartisan organization the same time I am running for Congress.

I represented everything Democrats loathed.

The Congress is very vindictive, and they've proved it time and again.

I have no doubt that the Congress is active in manipulative politics.