A Quote by Charlie Sykes

The GOP was once the party of William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, and John McCain.

Charlie Sykes

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GOP John McCain Once Party Reagan William

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Charlie Sykes
Born: November 11, 1954

The ur-conservatives of the 1950s - William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and all the rest - were revolting not against a liberal administration but against the moderate conservatism of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Max Boot

So the Republican party of Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is dead. It's over. It doesn't exist anymore.

Steve Schmidt

Here's one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan.

Bill Kristol

My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview.

Max Boot

If I were to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - which I think it's fairly safe to say is not going to happen - I would still expect the headline on my obituary to read: 'Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr., is dead at 78.'

Christopher Buckley

Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You're not Ronald Reagan. You can't run as him; you can't relive his career. You can't just have somebody else's career. You have to be you.

Michael J. Knowles

William F. Buckley, Jr. does not so much speak as exhale, but he exhales polysyllabically, and the results are remarkable.

Edwin Newman

Back in 1980, the conservative movement was all-in for Ronald Reagan. Once Reagan won, they all wanted to be on the team. It was a landslide. Everybody wants to bask in that glow. And then as the Reagan years began, then the Republicans, certain members of the party began to individually fall out and start talking about problems they had, secretly telling the media they thought Reagan was a dunce and a danger to world peace, adopting the Democrat line that Reagan's finger on the nuclear button couldn't be trusted.

Rush Limbaugh

Ronald Reagan leaves in 1989, and that's when coincidentally I show up, and that's when all these internecine wars within the conservative movement, and then William F. Buckley died. That's when all these intramural, internecine wars began for primacy, dominance, smartest guy-in-the-room competitions began in the conservative movement.

Rush Limbaugh

I knew Buckley - he was a friend of mine - and Steve Bannon is no William F. Buckley. Buckley marginalized the kooks. Bannon empowered them.

Charlie Sykes

I still remember March 31, 1981, when a deeply disturbed John Hinckley Jr. took aim at President Ronald Reagan and fired shots that hospitalized the Commander-in-Chief and two others, and left his Press Secretary James Brady paralyzed for life.

Charles B. Rangel

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.

Mark McKinnon

Nancy Reagan sort of downplayed that, you know - but she was quite successful. At the time she married Ronald Reagan, I think she was keenly aware that [Reagan's first wife] Jane Wyman's career had eclipsed Ronald Reagan's, so she was very determined not to have that happen.

Cynthia Nixon

For decades, conservatives have struggled with containing crackpottery, most notably William F. Buckley's famous excommunication of the John Birch Society in the 1960s.

Charlie Sykes

We don't have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.