Ideological Drift Quotes

I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.

I grew up as a Democrat in a very strong Democratic family, but I will tell you that the Democratic Party that exists in this country is not the Democratic Party I grew up around.

As someone who has spent much of my life identifying as a conservative, I can't stand what American conservatism has become.

Half a century ago, Ronald Reagan, the man whose relentless optimism inspired me to enter politics, famously said that he didn't leave the Democratic Party; the party left him. I can certainly relate. I didn't leave the Republican Party; it left me.

If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.

The left has lost the common touch.

The left no longer stands for common sense, as it did in the days of Tom Paine.

There has always been something less than wholesome about New Labour. But Blair for a long time had an easy ride. There was the whopping majority. There was the relief that the Tories were finally gone. There was the grand hyperbole.

I think that more and more you're going to see people of good will on their side of the aisle say you know what, we got to get off the bus here, this is not headed in the right direction.

I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me.

It is the curse of the Labor movement that, as soon as it has acquired a certain “power,” it seeks to enlarge this power by unprincipled means. Social-Democracy also was originally “pure” in almost all countries. Most Social-patriots of today were real Marxists. By Marxist propaganda the masses were won, and as soon as the party gained “power,” they [the principled means] were abandoned.

Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow.

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.

If we don't change our culture, the politics is going to migrate more and more to statism.

I am retiring from the Senate because I am far from my party on many issues. It would be very hard for me to win the Republican primary election for teh Senate. I don't think I have changed much. The Republican party has changed a great deal.

I was a Likud member for many years. The problem in the Likud is that every leader takes the Likud to the left. It wasn't easy for me to take this step.

I sometimes think that I didn't leave the Republican Party, as much as it left me.

The Democratic Party is no longer the Democratic Party.

The left has lost touch with popular opinion, thereby making it possible for the right to present itself as the party of common sense.

The Republican Party is no longer the Republican Party.

Democrat leaders are not only out of the American mainstream, but are also out of the Democratic mainstream.

It could fairly be said that the U.S. is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world. As our neighbors to the south elect left-wing or even socialist governments, we are lurching further to the right. As Europe becomes less engaged to the Church, we are becoming more fundamentalist.

The Republicans have lost their way. Principle has been swapped for power, and they have gotten neither. They deserve to have lost.