Dick Morris Quotes

Spontaneous combustion of grassroots politics is the future.

Anybody who thinks that getting a communication from a voter in your district is spam - that guy is pork. Roast pork unless he changes his point of view.

As Bob Dole found out, you can't keep a positive image while being your party's mouthpiece in Congress. That's why no legislative leader since James Madison has ever been elected president.

Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.

I didn't do what they said I did. I may have done enough so that I don't know if I can prove my innocence.

More and more, the Democrats are not merely inconsistent, wrong and/or misguided - they are the worst of all possible things you can be in Washington: irrelevant.

Take whatever position you want, but do take a position, because once you do, ample money awaits you on either side.

Today, a politician does not just need public support to win elections; he needs it to govern.

Obama's perverse view of fairness threatens to create reverse incentives, militating against growth, jobs, expansion and upward mobility.

No true patriot could be for Ron Paul.

The stronger Hillary is, the weaker she is. The more she seems like a likely presidential winner, the more difficult the senate race becomes in New York. It's perfect.

I probably had 150 meetings with Trent Lott. He has said exactly as many racist things to me as Bill Clinton has, which is to say zero.

There is literally no such thing as an idea that cannot be expressed well and articulately to today's voters in thirty seconds.

The typical presidential staff resents the vice-president even more than they do the first lady.

The key to controlling your own political party, so that it does not eat you alive, is to realize that while Democratic and Republican leaders differ sharply, their voters do not.

The opposing party rarely causes so much angst as does one's own.

... the top 10 percent of incomes pay 70 percent of the income taxes and cast about 25 percent of the vote.

Presidents generally do what they are good at in their first four years, then spend their second term responding to the agendas imposed upon them by events.

Truth is that which cannot be proved false.

The financial interdependence of the world's banks is like the interlocking alliances that predated World War I.

I love Karl Rove. He elected Bush.

Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the UN's going to take over' - well, they're beginning to have a case.

[T]he harm [Clinton AG] Reno did to American national security in the fight against terror was incalculable.

...nobody would think of asking the U.N. General Assembly what it thinks because it is dominated by nations with no power and less legitimacy

The White House will run itself while the president is away. That's why he has to be sure not to be away too much.

Washington is a mean town where human sacrifice has been raised to an art form.

The Darwinian adaptive trait of our time is the ability to figure out when we are being lied to on television.

Spin is overrated. It is strategy, not spin, that wins elections.

Despite romantic fantasies about caring candidates who learn of America in donut shops, most politicians rely on media to teach them what concerns the average person.

Much of the DOE green energy lending program is a scam. It is a slush fund of pork for paying back campaign contributors.

The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on AFDC, will now grow to a clear majority of the U.S. population.

If you're going to be a sexual predator, be a Democrat.

I think that really, when we look at this whole process, we can come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat, that fundamentally all Democrats are Democrats.

The most basic decision a modern politician must make is whether to be aggressive or conciliatory.

There is no substitute for a clear vision and a decisive direction.

In fighting scandal, the key is not to overreact.

Every donation received is a potential negative ad. Vetting money is just as important as raising it.

The key to running a campaign on the cheap is to avoid spending money on anything other than projecting a message.

Leadership is a dynamic tension between where a politician thinks his country must go and where his voters want it to go.

It is from the center that leaders must lead.

In Canada the cancer death rate is 16% higher than in the U.S. because of rationing of medical care. It takes an eight week wait to get radiation therapy for cancer.

Barack Obama has fatally undermined our currency, our solvency, our financial stability, and - ultimately - our economy all to spend money that has had no economic effect!

In the real world, banks hang onto their money for fear of making bad loans, no matter how many bailouts or stimulus packages Washington passes.