Mark Shields Quotes - Page 4

John McCain was victimized in the South Carolina primary.

You can't have someone with a pinkie out there at the U.N. or any other place.

There is always strength in numbers

Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home. People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.

If I were John Bolton, I'd take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws.

George Bush says what John Kerry did was noble. Yet he sees him being savaged by his own supporters.

As Bill Clinton said so eloquently at the convention, during Vietnam there was a chance to serve; there was a chance not to serve.

But the people at home if we're doing a town meeting or a town format. You have to answer the question that is asked. And what people at home are gauging how does this candidate respond to the questioner? Do they show respect to the questioner? Do they try to understand why the questioner is asking that? Do they respond to the question? Is there a human connection between the two? It's where Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012. He lost the voters on who was a stronger leader, who had a vision for the future, but on who cares about people like me, he trounced Mitt Romney.

Since the election, since the formation of a government, the death in Iraq has increased. The United States stands by, helpless to do anything about it. That's the reality, not George Bush's revisionist history!

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

We have weakened the parties and strengthened all the special interests.

The Republicans have, with some pride - George W. Bush won the White House by promising to restore dignity to the Oval Office. And they were or presented themselves as the family - the party of family values.

Every Republican candidate in the country is going to be asked whether in a debate or where else, by opponents or by the press, do you consider Donald Trump to be an appropriate role model for the children of our state? And it just - as far as the women's vote reported on in Georgia, it makes it so, not simply difficult. It makes it almost impossible for somebody with self-respect, who has a mother or sister or a daughter, somebody like this in Abraham Lincoln's chair.

Richard Nixon said it best. It makes no difference whether they hold your nose or whether they go would through a wall to vote for you. It counts the same with the X.

Politics is a contact sport - a question of accepting an elbow or two.

I think she [Hillary Clinton] would be far superior to President [Barack] Obama, who is basically remote, aloof and not involved with - he doesn't deal with members of Congress.

The Democratic Party is a coalition. Its strength and its weakness is, it's a coalition of interest groups, caucuses. It's a lot less homogeneous than the Republican Party, where people tend to believe the same things and oftentimes look alike.

The Democrats have this high level of expectation of what government can do.

There is no question that, in 1980, Ronald Reagan had been portrayed as a war-monger, somebody who couldn't do anything off a script. And the one debate with President Jimmy Carter, he stood toe-to-toe and reassured people that he wasn't bound and determined to start World War III on the spot and could make a coherent statement.

If Mitt Romney had got the percentage Ronald Reagan did of Hispanics, he would have defeated Barack Obama.

All about midterm elections is turnouts. And turnout is measured by enthusiasm, intensity, how interested are people. And President Obama - candidate Obama had it on his side in 2008. The Democrats had it on their side in 2006. The enthusiasm, the intensity, the passion was all on their side.

Barack Obama did get a higher percentage of the vote than anybody has in this country in 20 years. I mean, it was a resounding victory. I mean, whether his core constituency was 20 percent or what, his electoral constituency, which is how we measure elections, was 53 percent, which was, you know, historically high, the highest of any Democrat, other than Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

The reality is that the Republicans twice had Mitt Romney as a potential nominee. They chose him in 2008 - 2012. In 2008 and 2012, he had been the most get tough on illegal immigrants, on undocumented immigrants, illegals, as he called them, accused John McCain of wanting to give them Social Security checks, accused Mike Huckabee selling out to them with the DREAM Act in Arkansas, was really the most strident.

[Hillary Clinton] showed, while in the Senate, that ability to connect and reach across and to forge alliances. I think she will be better [than Barack Obama]. But I think the problem with connecting emotionally with the people remains at large is - in a wholesale way.

The Republicans are looking at a country that is going to be a majority minority country in just over a generation. And they are an increasingly white party.