To be able to compete, we've got to improve our education system, our litigation environment, our tax code, our health system and our trading policies if we're going to be as strong economically in the years ahead.
If you are wealthy and can hire enough accountants and attorneys, you can find ways around the code. It's fundamentally not fair. It wastes a lot of time and energy and effort to comply with it. It doesn't encourage savings and investment. And we need to simply it and make it more fair.
Our competition for American business is no longer in the next county or the next state, it's around the world.
In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.
To win in November, Republican candidates must show they are in touch with voter concerns about growth, jobs, paychecks, government spending and debt. The only way to do this is by offering specific, persuasive ideas.
'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.
I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian race as fear-based, smear-based and anything goes.
Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as 'deficits as far as the eye can see.' But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?
So Americans do want their presidents, by and large, you want them to be people who get things done and have experience. That's going to be Trump's big disadvantage going into this election, because people are going to be looking back and saying, we've got the guy without the experience who said the things that sounded good. And guess what? That hasn't worked out for us too well.
In Europe and the United States, you've got different systems to select candidates, and no system is perfect.
If you decide to become a political actor, then the things that you say and you do become subject of public scrutiny and comment.
When you appoint someone, you appoint somebody because of their character, their convictions, their abilities. And not because you have a belief, a confidence, in a foreordained outcome in any given decision.
There has to be a consequence to failure. Schools in the inner cities cannot be told, 'Oh, we want you to teach every child to learn how to read and, incidentally, if you fail to do that there's no consequence,' .. There has to be a consequence to failure, and the Title I money needs to follow the child.
America has become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day.
Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.
The labor movement must be destroyed.
It's a mandate for you to do in office what you said you would do on the campaign trail.
That's important, I think, for people who come here to realize that we are here for only a time and we have an obligation of service and we need to keep things in perspective.
Our health-care issues is another big structural drag. All of these need to be dealt with if we're going to keep the American economy the most dynamic and flexible in the world.
If we're going to have a strong and dynamic economy in the years ahead, we need to tackle some of the structural challenges that our economy faces and the tax code is one of the biggest.
You may be right that people say: You know what, we had Obama. He was inexperienced. The guy had great rhetoric, sounded good, looked good, but has turned out to be an utter disaster. I want someone where I have confidence and credibility that they're up to the job and that I can trust what they tell me.
If you make a mistake, clean it up quicker rather than later.
It's a complex system we live in to think the actions that we take have consequences beyond the years in which we serve, and we all have an obligation to do what is best for our country.
Well, marriage is a very important part of our culture and our society. If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal.
My name is Patrick Fitzgerald ... I like to tear the tops off small animals.
