Political Campaign Strategy Quotes

Rand Paul is officially running for president. He even revealed his campaign slogan, which is 'Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream.' It's hard to tell if he's running for president or doing an infomercial for Bowflex.

I don't think there's anybody who's run a campaign like [Donald Trump] successfully in modern history, not that I can think of. And, as a consequence because he didn't have the supports of many of the establishment in his own party, because he ran sort of an improvisational campaign.

Aside from being bad sportsmanship - Romney basically said Obama won by cheating - he was displaying the same obtuseness about the wants and needs of ordinary people that did more to torpedo his campaign than any goodies Obama might have had to dole out.

Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

The [Donald] Trump campaign turned on a dime instantly as soon as those WikiLeaks dumps started.

Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he's running for governor. He's got a great slogan - 'Vote for me, or I'll make 'Kindergarten Cop II

Bill Clinton was giving the Clinton campaign the best advice.

What was particularly impressive by the [Donald] Trump campaign at the time is how they were so organized around the WikiLeaks stuff.

Part of the challenge of the Barack Obama campaign was to try to neutralize that white backlash, and of course, he was masterful in doing that.

You have got to know what you're doing on your very first day there. So, look, this is not an attack or anything of that nature. It's just a very simple observation. If you want to be president, you have to start detailing some specific public policy. And I don't think from this point forward in the campaign, voters are going to be as tolerant of the lack of that as they have been up to now.

I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

One of Governor Romney's aides today on television said that Governor Romney, after he wins the primaries, will be like an [Etch A Sketch] - you take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone, and he's going to draw a whole new picture for the general election.

Running for president is the new selfie.

We need to invest at the local party unit and focus our energy on turn out. That's how we come back, and we can come back.

If you looked at Jeb Bush's campaign, it's more than just money. It's the nature of the candidate and the message and all that stuff.

What is key for winning the election is to be able to put forth a vision for our future and how this election affects people's lives.

From its skillful editing to its out-of-control budget and its relentless marketing, Mr. Obama's team played a different game at a different level than Sen. John McCain and his traditionalist staff.

You're 18 points down [in the polls]... You might as well do what's right.

Hillary Clinton has built a huge machine. Donald Trump's asset is people on Facebook and twitter. He can communicate with them eight or 10 times a day with no money. This is a different world.

If you want to run for the United States Senate, you hire a consultant who will do polling for you, who will tell you the kinds of television ads you should run, who will tell you that most of the money you raise has got to go into TV. Raising money, and then putting that money into the hands of consultants, who then put on TV ads - that's more or less what campaigns are about. We've got to change that.

[Thomas] Dewey's view was that if he made no mistakes he would win So we sat around making sure he would make no mistakes. And I think we succeeded, but in fact that isn't the way it went. [Dewey lost]