Steven Van Zandt Quotes

Texans don't want to sit back and watch Austin turn into Washington, D.C. State leaders in power keep forcing people to opposite corners to prepare for a fight instead of coming together to get things done.

Aren't we at the point where the closer we get to chaos, the more concern that there should be about coming to the table and compromising with Democrats? This is not leadership. This is almost like dictatorship.

Today, I think the attitude is that governing is not necessarily good politics, and the result is that it's much more partisan and much more divided.

True partisans draft legislation that gives themselves everything and their enemies nothing. They love bills that repulse and even disgust the other side. Today's politics have become an all-or-nothing, black-or-white, zero-sum game - it's not a contact sport but a blood sport.

Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. America is something different.

Incivility is not the disease. It is the symptom. Partisanship is the disease…. When your highest duty is to your party, the public interest becomes subservient.

The public good is being compromised in the conflicts between our rival political parties.

Washington is a complete mess. It's become a venue for partisan bickering, where the needs of the working class just don't matter.

The worst excesses of the Congress of the 1980s pale in comparison with what is going on in Washington today.

For the past eight years, the right has been better at working the refs. Now the left is learning how to play the game.

I think it's probably much easier to do political comedy from a two-party point of view, in that the majority have some sense of what it means to be one or the other.

I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.

Democrats believe they can win at the ballot box by obstructing, and they would rather win the next election than move America forward.

All people are born alike - except Republicans and Democrats.

To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.

There's no such thing as a partisan base.

It's nice to say let's be bipartisan. But we're a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation.

I think we're probably more unified than ever before because we're in a battle for survival. Not only for survival as the Republican Party, but survival of the check and balance system in our government.

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.

Any party that writes off 25, 30, 35 percent of the American people is not going to be a winner.

Negative politics have always been around.

I do not understand those who divide political life from the point of view of political parties.

I think we are dying in America, I think our democracy is over.

Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me.

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