Republican Governance Quotes

America's Latino immigration deluge is so little like any earlier wave, so hostile or resistant to sharing the common American language, civic rites and virtues upon which our republican self-governance depends, that it constitutes a major potential threat to the cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States

As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them.

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?

When Republicans say they want to run government 'like a business,' they apparently mean 'run government like a Trump casino headed straight for bankruptcy court.'

The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.

I recommend to you the subdivision of our territorial area into counties, suited to the wants and convenience of the people, with provision for the more minute subdivisions of townships, districts and precincts for municipal government and police. These subdivisions ought to be as small as the density of population may render possible. It is in these complete little republics where the sovereign power of the people is always in exercise, where self government has perpetual vitality and independent freedom is practiced and enjoyed.

We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

Finally, I want to make the point that we are Republicans. We are the majority. It is going to be a little more difficult because we have to govern and come up with ideas.

The division into Whig and Tory is founded in the nature of men; the weakly and nerveless, the rich and the corrupt, seeing more safety and accessibility in a strong executive; the healthy, firm, and virtuous, feeling confidence in their physical and moral resources, and willing to part with only so much power as is necessary for their good government; and, therefore, to retain the rest in the hands of the many…

It should therefore be difficult in a republic to declare war; but not to make peace.

I'm not worried about a 'blue wave,' I just think Republicans have to act like Republicans and govern like Republicans.

The genius of Republican liberty, seems to demand on one side, not only that all power should be derived from the people; but, that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people, by a short duration of their appointments; and, that, even during this short period, the trust should be placed not in a few, but in a number of hands.

Virtue, patriotism, or love of country, never was and never will be, till mens’ natures are changed a fixed, permanent principle and support of government. But in an agricultural country, a general possession of land…may be rendered perpetual, and the inequalities introduced by commerce, are too fluctuating to endanger government. An equality of property, with a necessity of alienation, constantly operating to destroy combinations of powerful families, is the very soul of a republic.

I think the failures of Republican governance led to a distrust of Republican elites, which is fair enough.

In America, we do not have a democracy. It's not what we have. We have a representative republic and therefore the rules and regulations that have been written to maintain it are not truly democratic - not purely democratic - in origin. They are about protecting and defending the establishment of this republic.

'Elections have consequences,' President Obama said, setting his new policy agenda just three days after taking office in 2009. Three elections later, the president's party has lost 70 House seats and 14 Senate seats. The job of Republicans now is to govern with the confidence that elections do have consequences, promptly passing the conservative reform the voters have demanded.

Holding office often requires swearing an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Running for office should include accepting responsibility for this, too, so that our democratic republic's underpinnings can remain strong for generations to come.

Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."

A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbid as few things as possible; a wise legislature would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?

In a republic the first rule for the guidance of the citizen is obedience of the law.

If it was not easy to make a king, it will be even more difficult to make a republic in a country where there are no republicans.

During the games of the Circus, he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms, of the republic.

My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual.

Thou shalt never recognize as the legitimate government of the country any other than that which is elected by the free and spontaneous will of the peoples, and the republican system being the most adaptable to the government of the Americas, thou shalt try by all means within thy power to have the peoples adopt it.

There's a lot of things we can do to balance out what Obama's done and going forward show the American people the Republican Party can govern. I want a coalition of tea party people, independents, moderate Democrats trying to find a way to move this country forward before we become Greece.