Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by William Kristol - Page 2

If President [Barack] Obama - President [Donald] Trump shows up with a, you know, cleaver and just says, I can get rid of all these regulations, I can get rid of ObamaCare, no problem at all, then that would be a mistake.

Mitt Romney has to convince the American public that they need to do something they're not usually inclined to do - replace a sitting president with a challenger. And unlike in 1980 and 1992, when the public was persuaded to do just that, the incumbent president has not been weakened by a primary opponent.

First of all, legally, it's hard to do these things[ get rid of ObamaCare]. Donald Trump needs a lot of competent people.

If you look at the polls, for all the talk about immigration and even trade, ObamaCare was an extremely important issue for Trump voters in 2016.

[I]t's up to Republicans to expose the bureaucracies and criticize the orthodoxies - to ask why visas for travel to the United States are still being issued in West Africa and why American military forces are being deployed there without a workable plan or intelligible purpose, why CDC spending priorities are so skewed and CDC management so weak, and why here at home routine police powers aren't being used and routine public health measures aren't being implemented.

I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [...] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.

You all would be really shocked, if you were dropped back down into when I went to college, by the narrowness of the opinions you could get just by reading newspapers and magazines and watching TV.

I think that's what's - one of the things that is alarming to me is [Donald] Trump, and I think Trump supporters seem to believe, he won, huge upset, full credit to him, and has got the wind at his back. And Republicans on The Hill do want him to succeed, obviously, and they're deferring to him more than they deep down in private sort of wish - want to, but they are going to defer to him publicly for awhile. But I think that is going to run out faster than people think.

The most devastating indictment of the president's proposal is that it threatens to destroy virtually everything about American health care that's worth preserving. Under the plan's layers of regulation and oversight, even seeing a doctor whenever you like will be no easy matter: access to physicians will be carefully regulated by gatekeepers; referrals to specialists will be strongly discouraged; second opinions will be almost unheard of; and the availability of new drugs will be limited.

[Donald ] Trump is more important than all of us. He's more important than the media.

These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.

He should release the tax returns tomorrow. It's crazy. You've got to release six, eight, ten years back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two. He has to give a big speech in defense of capitalism, and that will elevate, I think, this race above this tactical back and forth, which I do think he's on the margin of losing.

Look, at actual Republican and conservative think-tank proposals to replace ObamaCare all have the pre-existing condition provision in, done somewhat differently from [Barack] President Obama's.

Leo Strauss's discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought.

The repealing and replacing of Obamacare is very complicated. It is what a White House and congressional leadership, serious White House and serious congressional leadership, should meet on and work on and figure out a strategy of, and it may work and it may not. Obviously not every administration gets things through, even when they have much larger majorities in congress and a much larger popular vote than Donald Trump had.

Recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don't pay income taxes are Romney supporters - especially of course seniors (who might well 'believe they are entitled to heath care,' a position Romney agrees with), as well as many lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country even if they're not getting a tax cut under the Romney plan. So Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him.

The trouble with politics and political coverage today is that there's too much liberal bias.... There's too much tilt toward the left-wing agenda. Too much apology for liberal policy failures. Too much pandering to liberal candidates and causes.