Top 138 Quotes & Sayings by Mark McKinnon - Page 2

Sometime in the not too distant future, denying gays the right to marry will be viewed as historically corrupt - as corrupt as denying slaves their freedom.

Normally, when politicians talk about 'cutting the budget,' they really mean reducing the amount of increase. Actual spending goes up while the politicians claim to have 'cut the budget.'

To pull off successful attacks in debates, you have to execute with nuance and subtlety. It has to be artful.

Life inside the Beltway bubble dulls your thinking.

CEOs make hard decisions; sometimes, the least worst is the right one.

Weary of wily politicians who say one thing and do another, voters and advocacy groups insist presidential contenders commit to the cause du jour in writing, but candidates are foolish to comply. Words matter.

America's commitment to religious freedom and tolerance should not be conditional.

Running for president is hard. But it's good preparation. Because being president is a lot harder.

If you're running for office, it's tough to be an incumbent. It's tough to run out of Washington. It's better to be an outsider. And Establishment support doesn't help; it more likely hurts.

Rand Paul comes off like an academic stiff who wants to give us a lecture on American civics.

Middle America believes in fair play, an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail.

Debates require a lot of hard work and preparation. If you try to wing it, it shows.

As a husband and as a father of girls, I cannot imagine any woman in my family making the sacrifice of sanity required to run for office. The limited reward for public service cannot blunt the cost.

When elected officials and others contribute to a climate and culture that fosters hyper-partisanship, we've got to blow the whistle.

Politics at bottom is not all that complicated. It's all about timing.

Voters crave authenticity.

Every president becomes a caricature. The press, partisans, late-night shows, and other arbiters of our culture these days boil down complicated and multi-faceted personalities into one-dimensional punchlines.

Politics only makes the difficult challenge of marriage even harder, with the demands of the job and the public spotlight it casts on a union.

I don't claim any moral or ethical high ground, but I also have chosen not to run for public office. Shouldn't there be a higher standard of conduct for public officials?

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

I'm saying it loud: I'm a Republican who supports gay rights.

Twitter is not a business. I know its founders would like to think it is. It is, for the most part, a diversion.

Infrastructure spending does not create immediate jobs, and more than half of those jobs will pull from the pool of the already employed.

Marketers know - no matter how deep the emotional connection or brand loyalty - when a product does not perform, rational thought overtakes emotion, and most consumers make a new choice.

Temporary tax cuts don't create permanent confidence, nor permanent jobs.

The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.

Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. We have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights.

The Hippocratic Oath says do no harm. It's the Hypocritical Oath that says do no harm to one's political future.

America as we know it will end unless we end Medicare as we know it.

It's just madness. First email. Then instant message. Then MySpace. Then Facebook. Then LinkedIn. Then Twitter. It's not enough anymore to 'Just do it.' Now we have to tell everyone we are doing it, when we are doing it, where we are doing it and why we are doing it.

Mitt Romney is a businessman, a turnaround artist, a CEO. That is who he is. The former governor has experience in the public and private sector.

One thing is clear: Ron Paul defies labels.

Great presidents, and even those not so great, never complained about the hands they were dealt. Just the opposite. They assumed they were in the big chair to meet big challenges, no matter how difficult.

Public unions are big money.

Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past.

A Rick Santorum presidency would be very, very dangerous for America.

For most of my life, I've considered myself a political centrist.

To open up new markets and create American jobs, we need to make global bilateral free trade agreements a priority as they were under the Clinton administration.

People who know Paul Ryan say, 'He will be president one day.'

Wind and solar power are land-intensive, a green sin, but not energy-dense, and affordable only when heavily subsidized. And wind power must be supplemented with hydrocarbons for reliability.

There's only one way we're going to change our political climate and ensure we establish some respect in our discourse. And that is to show there is a real price to pay for being a disrespectful partisan idiot.

Every day I am being told to sign up for Tumblr, Yammer, Friendfeed, Plaxo, Last.fm, ping.fm or the hot social-media tool du jour that happened to get mentioned on Mashable.com. It is like a social-media arms race. Each one of these new tools is like a cool new night club. Hot today, gone tomorrow, replaced with something else.

A few words about Sarah Palin: She is one of the most fascinating women I have ever met. She crackles with energy like a live electrical wire and on first meeting gets about three inches from your face.

Advocacy groups and voters are not wrong to push candidates to declare their position clearly on policy issues. That is good citizenship. Hard questions should be asked of every candidate, every politician. And those public servants should be prepared to answer, but in their own words.

The job of elected leaders is to deliver results that represent the interests of the citizens who placed them in a position of authority with their voice, their vote. But these days, money talks louder.

Wages, investments, and home values are the three legs of the economic stool for most Americans.

Public employees contribute real value for the benefit of all citizens. Public-union bosses collect real money from all taxpayers for the benefit of a few.

I'm amazed, as quirky, individual and selfish as most of us are, that anyone stays married for long.

The problem with State of the Union speeches is that they are, by their nature and design, alphabet soup. It's hard to know what a president really cares about when they run down a laundry list and check every issue box under the sun for fear they will offend some constituency if they don't.

A troubled economy is always the sitting president's fault. It was when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, and when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by running against George W. Bush.

I don't buy the argument that there can't be a successful independent candidacy for the presidency of the United States. People who say, 'It can't happen,' are many of the same people who said we'd never elect an African American.

When you look at the money spent by labor unions for Democrats, it comes as no surprise the Democrats crafted a campaign-finance 'disclosure' bill with the thresholds adjusted to exempt unions.

Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney is a nice guy. But, we know where nice guys finish in politics.

I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader.

Conservative women in politics run a punishing gauntlet. They endure psychological evaluations and near-gynecological exams their male and liberal counterparts do not.

Presidential primary debates are an important part of our political process. But the media has wrested complete control from the parties and candidates over everything, including the number, the format, the qualifications, and the moderators. And they've become a circus.

Presidents should do whatever possible and practical to encourage an environment of cooperation and bipartisanship. And they should maintain a certain level of decorum, diplomacy and decency. But, at the end of the day, presidents get elected to enact change.

Sarah Palin is brilliant. She is a media magnet and a media magnate. She creates headlines and draws crowds wherever she goes, whether it's 98 degrees in the desert of Arizona or below freezing in the snow of Wisconsin.

Now personally, I think the president should golf every day and never have a press conference. I want the leader of the free world to be as stress-free as possible. And if golf helps fade the psychic heat from the job, by all means tee it up often, Mr. President.