A Quote by P. J. O'Rourke
In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Democracy in some ways is a very illogical political system. When you win an election, you have to preserve the institutions that would make it possible for your political enemies to win next time. If you think about it, that's almost antithetical to human nature.
The ideas that accompany that victory, the ideas and the policies that are related to those ideas that are implemented after you win the election. And then it's not just one election; you have to keep winning elections. You have to keep defeating liberals, and it's the same thing here in the Brexit vote.
I think the only way that political system can be corrected is for the American people to see very vividly that it needs repair. If things are going to worse in the future, the American people, in every congressional district in the land, might demand that reforms take place in the political system.
As politics is not subtraction but addition, those who share views and ideas need to join forces and they have to cooperate with political opponents even after they win an election.
It's pretty clear that Hillary Clinton was a deeply, deeply flawed alternative. She had the wrong combination of the internal political chops to muscle out all the mainstream nominations from the field, leaving only Bernie Sanders, who was unacceptable to the Democrats' party establishment. But she also had a real lack of political skill that would enable her to win the general election.
It's said that once you win an election, that you win political capital, and that's kind of my intent, is to spend political capital on the Gulf Coast, among other areas.
The mythology is that political change happens only in election years. The truth is you build from election to election.
I don't think we can depend on Congress. In the American political system - we have been brought up to believe that the American political system works beautifully; it is democratic; Congress represents us; the President is elected, he represents us - it doesn't work that way.
The whole world knows that American TV companies have monopolized Olympic broadcasts and in order to please the fans in their country they do everything they can to keep American viewers interested in what is going on at the hockey rink in Sochi. According to their logic, Americans should always win, no matter what. It was absolutely obvious that [Fyodor] Tyutin's goal yesterday should have been allowed. This was clear to the whole world except the American referee, American TV and those officials with American passports who rule international hockey, grossly neglecting all Olympic principles.
A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president's popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.
There seems to be this perception that there was some seat waiting out there for me, that Greens were absolutely guaranteed to win - and there wasn't.
I do not believe that it can be too often repeated that the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish. The first banning of an association because it advocates hated ideas - whether that association be called a political party or not - marks a fateful moment in the history of a free country.
Women are allowed to enter the spaces of the senses, the space of the body, the spaces opened by sensations, all kinds of feelings, but women are not allowed to enter the spaces of reason to the same extent, that is to say the space of ideas, political ideas.
It's the Democrat Party that is destroying the integrity of the American electoral system. It's not Vladimir Putin. It's not Dmitry Medvedev. It's the Democrat Party, which has sought to destroy the integrity of the American electoral system, all because they're a bunch of spoilsports who lost the election.
What is absolutely clear is that if Trump is the nominee, Republicans cannot win. Maybe they can't win with Rubio or Cruz or Kasich. We don't know. But what is absolutely certain is that with Hillary Clinton locking up the Democratic base, she is going to win unless she has a strong contender who is going to be able to pull - not only bring the entire Republican Party on the side, but win moderates. Donald Trump cannot do that.
From a distance, the American political system is a remarkable success. We have accomplished the peaceful transfer of power for more than two hundred years, and that's unmatched by any civilization in human history. Up close, our political system still has all the ugliness and bad actors that you might suspect.
Related Authors
Bill Maher Quotes
American
Comedian
Craig Ferguson Quotes
Scottish
Comedian
David Letterman Quotes
American
Comedian
Demetri Martin Quotes
American
Comedian
Ellen DeGeneres Quotes
American
Comedian
George Carlin Quotes
American
Comedian
Jay Leno Quotes
American
Comedian
Jim Gaffigan Quotes
American
Comedian
Jimmy Fallon Quotes
American
Comedian
Joan Rivers Quotes
American
Comedian
Mitch Hedberg Quotes
American
Comedian
Robin Williams Quotes
American
Comedian
Rodney Dangerfield Quotes
American
Comedian
Stephen Colbert Quotes
American
Comedian
Steve Martin Quotes
American
Comedian
Steven Wright Quotes
American
Comedian