Vajpayeeji's time was a time of mutual respect and understanding, irrespective of how small or big a party you are. In fact, Vajpayeeji's handling of a coalition is something of a benchmark in world politics.
What I hope is in five years' time, I can go to the British people in the election and say: Lots of you doubted that coalition politics worked, but it has worked.
The BJP has never considered its political opponents as enemies.
If we have political forces in the Bundestag, and in parts of the coalition, who... say they want to spend money on pensions, not weapons. Then I say, be honest and say you don't want a German army.
We are in an age of floating coalitions. Someone may be with you on one issue and against you on the next.
Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Clinton
Working as a Foreign Office lawyer in 2003, I was less worried by the quibbling over U.N. resolutions on Iraq than the coalition's capacity to effect positive change.
Anyone leaving the Congress' camp and joining - or even indirectly praising - the BJP-led NDA coalition immediately stands the risk of losing this Congress-issued certificate of secularism. It is a travesty!
TDP had to join hands with the Congress given the need for a major anchor party in the front against the BJP.
Elections in India are not contests between personalities. They are ultimately battles involving political parties; promises and pledges that political parties make; the vision and programmes that political parties bring to the table. So although, Modi's style is 'I, me, myself,' I don't think 2014 elections as a Modi versus Rahul contest.
What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition.
I was shadow health secretary for six years, and the beauty of being in opposition - if there is any beauty - is that you tend to get a pretty unvarnished view because no one bothers to paint the coal white before you turn up.
We proved that with civility, common sense, building bridges, working with coalitions and working with people one at a time, we could do something. … I can speak for the middle. … The real issue is the system itself.
I don't trust that the big-business part of our coalition is ever going to defend federalism and argue against regulatory capture. I don't trust that populists are going to defend religious liberty and the rights of creedal minorities.
Establishing a stable democracy is a two stage process. First you get rid of the old regime, then you build a durable democratic replacement. Because the first stage is dramatic, many people think the game is over when the dictator is gone. But the second stage is more difficult. There are many examples of broad coalitions coming together to oust dictators but relatively few of them stayed together and agreed on what a new regime should look like.
I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ...To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero.
I see myself as a small 'l' liberal, but not coalition liberal, necessarily.
You win elections with coalitions. You don't win elections by ideologically cleansing your party.
Spain is an example of how hard it is for a conservative party to campaign for elections if the suspicion is fueled that it wants to go into a coalition with the extreme right.
Vajpayee had a much bigger stature than Mr Modi. He knew how to run a coalition government very successfully.
With the situation in Iraq growing ever more dangerous, the 34-member Coalition of The Willing are, one by one, dropping out to join the other coalition known as Most of The Rest of The World.
Forming an alliance is not the tradition of the AAP and we will not fight elections in collaboration with any political party or front.
India's national elections are really an aggregate of thirty different state elections, each influenced by its own local considerations, regional political currents, and different patterns of political incumbency.
The Lib-Dems are sidekicks. They were born to be sidekicks and that's what they should concentrate on being.
We made this inexplicable turn into Iraq, where we've lost lives, money, honour and the coalition on [George] Bush's watch. Surely he's not suggesting that if the Democrats win, things can get worse. I mean, all we can do now is to look at our field policy and change the course. We need more diplomatic outreach toward Iran, Syria and Middle Eastern allies, and less bluster and less threats, and fewer troops.
In a mahagathabandhan, who will use whom and who will trip whom is not clear.
