Quotes about Party Caucuses

Pat Buchanan

The future belongs to Conservatives. They are younger, they are more energetic, they dominate the party caucuses, they dominate the nominating process. They are committed to ideas, not simply personal aggrandizement or title.

John Boehner

I had an “anything but yes” faction in my caucus … knuckleheads

Boehner had a faction of his Republican caucus—Tea Party Republicans—who wanted no compromises with the Democrats and the President at all. They were so radical that they would rather put the country into default on its debts than vote for a compromise budget or pass any other legislation that would either require compromise of would even make President Obama appear to have been successful. At several points, to break the gridlock, the President (Obama) agreed to support bills that the Republicans had introduced and sponsored. However, if the President proposed it, they would vote against it. They would not accept “Yes”.

H. W. Brands

In the early days of the republic, the secretary of state was the heir apparent to the president. Presidents could easily hand-pick their party's next candidate. The party caucuses formally selected the candidates, but presidents guided the process.

Mark Shields

The Republican Health Care Plan has three problems. It isn’t healthy, it is not caring and there is no plan.

The Republicans wanted to repeal Obamacare but could not agree among themselves on a replacement. Their hyperpolarized posture would not allow them to work with the Democrats so the leadership drafted legislation that purported to be a plan to provide for American Health Care. But they could not get their own entire caucus to support it, and so it failed.

Tom Harkin

I can remember going down there to lunches with Biden and Fritz Hollings and Ted Stevens and all these people. We’d go down there and have lunch together and talk and joke. We had a camaraderie. We don’t even have the dining room anymore, they closed it up. Because no one would go there anymore. A big part of the reason was fundraising. Starting sometime in the '90s, certainly by the end of the 2000s, you’d go down there, and there’d be one or two people there. Then pretty soon nobody’d go, and they just shut it down. And why is that? Well, we’re not here on Mondays. Tuesday is the party caucuses. Thursday’s the policy lunch, and Friday you’re out of here. So that only leaves Wednesday. And what are people doing Wednesday? They’re out raising money. Everybody’s at a fundraiser. I mean, so there is no time any longer for these lunches that we used to have.

Describing the Senate Dining Room which had closed because Senators were too busy fundraising. By 2013, Congress was generally only in session 3 days a week. Friday, the weekend, and Monday Congress was closed so that the members could raise money.

Lamar Alexander

The Congressional leadership has to reflect the current feelings of their party caucus.

Lloyd Axworthy

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defense can be made openly. You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant.

Nathaniel Macon

... it produces so much electioneering among the members of Congress that it seems to border on intrigue & bargain, and it is not known to the Constitution.

Refusing to attend a party caucus:

Henk Vredeling

Party conferences don't purchase fighter jets.

Party Caucuses Quotes