Interest Group Politics Quotes

Giving votes in exchange for ideological support. To wit: identity politics for homosexuals.

Public policy is designed by spin doctors who aim to keep our heads below the water. The public good is not a consideration, and their self-serving agendas prevail over common sense.

.In politics a man must learn to rise above principle.

The rise of a new kind of political science in the 1960s has been driving a wedge between political insiders and voters ever since. By turning voters into interest groups, it stopped establishment leaders from articulating a national narrative. It opened the way for Movement Conservatives to create today's political crisis.

When it imposes expensive regulatory mandates on the private sector, Congress often acts on the basis of interest-group pressures, anecdotes, and the emotions of the moment. The executive branch is hardly perfect, but it is far less likely to do that.

What is any public question but a conglomeration of private interests?

When I have to choose between voting for the people or voting for the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget.

The Democratic Party is a coalition. Its strength and its weakness is, it's a coalition of interest groups, caucuses. It's a lot less homogeneous than the Republican Party, where people tend to believe the same things and oftentimes look alike.

Today's uses of the Second Amendment may invoke James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, but they have a lot more to do with interest-group politics.

A bureau that benefits a well organized interest group will fare better in getting the sinews for administration than a bureau whose benefits are diffused over unorganized consumers or whose function is to restrain rather than to confer benefits.