Partisans, Partisanship Quotes

There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great political parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other.

People of similar political persuasions tend to flock together.

There are but two parties now—traitors and patriots.

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him, he is a statesman.

Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another. In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.

The bourgeoisie is having recourse to the vilest crimes, bribing society's lowest elements and supplying liquor to these outcasts with the purpose of bringing on pogroms. The partisans of the bourgeoisie, especially the higher officials, bank clerks, etc., are sabotaging and organizing strikes in order to block the government's efforts to reconstruct the state on a socialistic basis. Sabotage has spread even to the food-supply organizations and millions of people are threatened with famine. Special measures must be taken to fight counter-revolution and sabotage.

We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists

The politician may change sides so frequently as to find himself always in the majority, but most politicians have a preference for one party to the other

Let me ... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.

Obviously, Paul Ryan is not an 'America first' guy.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Liberals are the enemy of ordinary Americans!

He’s a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.

Politically speaking, Miami-Dade was once a Republican stronghold, thanks in large part to older Cuban voters who became more politically influential following the Bay of Pigs invasion. In contrast, Democrats used to rely on votes in North Florida and the Space Coast in an era of much softer partisanship.

This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans in the East, as well as in the Balkans, is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but it is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success.

Samuel Chase is tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partisan

My concern is that contention is becoming accepted as a way of life.

Nothing hath an uglier Look to us than Reason, when it is not of our side.

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.

I wouldn’t be too serious about bipartisanship. It’s a great myth that ought to be fostered. And don’t bring too damn much scholarship to bear on it. You’ll prove it out of existence if you’re not careful.

Republicans say to Democrats, “Your judges are political activists.” The Democrats respond to the Republicans, “Your judges are political activists.” So the public thinks that all judges are political activists and just politicians in robes. This is very worrying.

Each side had its uninformed fanatics. And each side had political leaders who fanned the flames with their rhetoric.

The stupidity of tribalism has made politics primarily about partisan identities, not persuasion or policy. The screamers on the right and left fuel one another. In a nation as big as ours, there is always someone somewhere saying something stupid—but tribalism takes this fact as its lifeblood. And it’s the excuse for otherwise civic-minded Americans to ignore the nuts in their own party and obsess only over the nuts in the other party. We’re tempted to think that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It takes a genuine leader to remind us that most of the time, the enemy of our enemy is still a jackass.

…moderates were inexorably sucked into the vortexes of the sectional passions that led to the war. [American Civil War]

There were precisely two groups of people who desperately wanted airport security to be browbeaten into giving suspicious passengers a pass: terrorists and Democrats.