Robert Novak Quotes

It's never a good time, when you're the president of the United States and your own party is finding lots of different ways to distance themselves from you.

The Republican Party does not reach out.

Trump, of course, has been very wrong in the past about important issues such as President Barack Obama's place of birth and Mexican immigrants, but the Republican frontrunner is correct in saying that former Republican President George W. Bush did not keep the country safe during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

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.

Republicans don't have to accept evolution, economics, climatology, or human sexuality, but I just watched a week of their national convention, and I need them to admit the historical existence of George W. Bush. If your party can run the nation for eight years and then have a national convention and not invite Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, or Tom DeLay, you're not a political movement, you're the witness protection program.

Since November 8, 2017 the United States is literally alone in the world in first of all refusing to join in efforts to do something about climate change, but even worse, dedicated to making the situation worse. Every part of the world is trying to do something. The United States alone is trying to destroy it, and it's not just Trump, it's the whole Republican Party. You just can't find words for it. And it's not reported. It's not discussed.

The carbon fuels industry-big oil and coal-have a 50-year lease on the Republican Party and they are drilling it for everything it's worth.

All of these years I've been doing my program I was under the impression the Republican Party wanted to beat Democrats. And as the years have gone by, it's become obvious to me that that's not their number one objective.

I would argue that there's been a backlash this year [2016]. They [the Kochs] pushed the [Republican] party too far right. The other thing that the backlash is against is the sense that politicians have been bought and sold.

The American people are beginning to see the Republicans' willingness to trample over 200 years of history, to step on the minority, to push everybody out of the way because they want 100 percent. It's rubbing the American people the wrong way. One-party rule is not good.

Fox News has effectively become the establishment. Fox has - you know, during non-election years, really tended to out flank the Republican Party in many ways in its conservatism and yet sort of lists back a little towards the, let's say right-center establishment type figures in part because Rupert Murdock, whose Ailes's ultimate boss over at 21st Century Fox, is a bit more pragmatic and centrist than Ailes himself.

Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann represent an existential threat to the Democratic Party the way that twenty years ago Clarence Thomas as a black man represented to liberals and the Democratic Party.

The Republican convention opens in New York to re-nominate George W. Bush and showcase the party's, quote, 'moderate side.' Will voters buy it?

I would prefer that in the Republican party, we not engage in trying to destroy each other, because all that does is hand the election over to the Democrats. I don't know why there is this penchant for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory, they'll find some way to destroy themselves. And it is just maddening to see it happening.

There are no moderate Republicans left, with the exception of a few who would vote with us when it doesn’t make any difference,” Frank said. “It’s the most rigid ideological party since before the Civil War. … The bumper sticker I’m going to have printed up for Democrats this year is, ‘We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.’

America has been betrayed. We've been betrayed by the leadership that Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have provided to this country over the last number of years. Think about just what's happened today.

If Donald Trump is our nominee, it could be the end of the Republican Party. It will split us and splinter us in a way that we may never be able to recover. And the Democrats will be joyful about it. It's not going to happen.

Where would the Republican Party being without talk radio the last 25 years? And yet who now is enemy number one? Talk radio! I don't know what I did to Michael Gerson, but he's back again in the Washington Post blaming everything [Donald] Trump on me.

Donald Trump as the nominee losing was to be the end of the Republican Party. The Democrats were gonna have basically one-party rule for 50 years, and look at what actually has happened. It's practically the reverse.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined brand,- as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

Ronald Reagan was a great role model for Respublicans party, and I think for most people. But he was a fellow that the American public just intuitively loved so much, that he could always get credit.

Well, there's a bright side to this for Ken Lay. You know, throughout the years Ken Lay has been a big campaign contributor to the Republican Party. So now, he'll be able to meet with those same people when he goes to prison.

Don't forget: before there would be a #NeverTrump hashtag, there would have been a #NeverJeb hashtag. And a lot of people would have been on that, and they would have said they would have stuck with it. If I were Donald Trump, and I was that much in the lead - he is so much in the lead he doesn't need to keep hating on the people who are the establishment who he hates so much. Why not try to bring them along and say, "Look, I believe this party is big enough for all of us. I want to hear from you. I want to make a deal" or whatever it might be.

I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.

We need a Republican Party that shows up on the South side of Chicago and shouts at the top of our lungs, 'We are the party of jobs and opportunity! The GOP is the ticket to the middle class.