Electoral Consequences Quotes

The public will not forgive us if their wish to leave is subject to a bitter and a divisive Conservative Party leadership race between Remain and Leave camps.

You really can't go back to the Senate after running for President .... The danger of running for the Presidency is that if you don't make it—and that's the case for almost everyone who tries—then you are considered a failure.

I think it's difficult for members of Congress to be as independent as they need to be in their voting.

The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered.

To go from chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in the Kansas Legislature to one of 50 on the Appropriations Committee and one of 435 in the whole House, it is more difficult to directly impact policy here.

If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain

Every election matters. Anyone that tells you otherwise doesn't understand politics. That said, not every election sends sweeping messages that are easy to discern, but every election provides lessons worth learning.

The Democratic Party is at grave risk of completely marginalizing itself from the American voters by continuing to lean into its absolutist anti-enforcement positions.

What the electorate gives, the electorate can take away

I think the voters believe that when you become president of the United States, you have a higher obligation and a higher standard than anybody in the world. And if you violate that standard, they're going to remember it on election day.

Hillary [Clinton] wins and the Republicans are gonna quickly be irrelevant. She's gonna get her Supreme Court nominee. She's gonna open the borders. The country is going to be flooded with unregistered Democrat voters, that are gonna end up voting anyway, to go along with the dead who vote.

If I move one way, I lose a couple votes. If I move another way, I lose a couple votes.

Freed from the burden of executive branch responsibility after the 2008 [presidential] defeat, Republicans began to lose touch with the real world of foreign policy.

I can't vote my own convictions on civil rights. If I did, I wouldn't be returned to the Senate. It's as simple as that.

Mr. Obama still has time to reverse course. A great deal depends on it. To fail on health care yet again might well be the 'Waterloo' Republicans dream of.

The political groups who have taken the responsibility to elect Mr. Macron have been discredited.

Disunity costs votes.

People who vote against this today are voting against me and I will not forget.

Political analysts tend to overinterpret the results of isolated elections.

I meant what I said about how electing Donald Trump will set our country back. I stand by that. However, I do wish that I wouldn't have made the blanket statement about not respecting anybody who voted for Trump.

Conventional wisdom holds that the public disproportionately blames Republicans for government shutdowns. The disproportionate election of Republicans to the U.S. Senate following the Republican-led shutdown of 2013 should have put that canard to rest.

Americans have generally gotten what they wanted on foreign policy issues—and they now ruthlessly punish those who implemented their will.

I know the divisions in our nation that led some to extreme votes. I respect them.

We can score political points. We can try to advance some important initiatives. But at some point, it takes sober-minded, responsible conservative leaders to identify when you've pushed as far as you can and to have the courage to go back and face the electorate and explain to them why you voted the way you did.

The leaders of a party, or those who are so called, have but little sway over their followers, particularly when not in Government, and when they have it not in their power to threaten them with any very serious consequences