A Quote by Rick Perlstein
One thing Republicans understand: In American elections, you have to choose from among only two people - not between the perfect and the good.
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In the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, American voters were forced to choose between a liberal Democrat and weak establishment Republicans. Democrats won both times.
We will have to choose not between color nor race nor religion nor between East and West either, but simply between being slaves and being free. And we will have to choose completely and for good; the time is already past now when we can choose a little of each, a little of both. We can choose a state of slavedom, and if we are powerful enough to be among the top two or three or ten, we can have a certain amount of license - until someone more powerful rises and has us machine-gunned against a cellar wall.
For decades now, Republicans and Democrats have shared the same mythology around the great American meritocracy. The only real difference was that republicans thought the American meritocracy was already perfect and Democrats believed it could be perfected if we just dealt with racism and sexism and other forms of bigotry.
You not only choose between two ways of life but you choose between two masters.
The problem we have is not Democrats versus Republicans. It is a Washington cartel. I've said many times the biggest divide we have politically is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between career politicians in both parties and the American people.
As an American, you appreciate the importance of our security alliance, the importance of the economic ties between our two countries, and while I knew of the two bonds between our two people, until I came here, I didn't really appreciate how deep the people-to-people connections are between the American people and the Japanese people.
We want perfect elections, not just any kind of elections. And it's the electoral commission that organizes elections in the country - this is what most people forget. We have an independent commission which, acccording to our constitution, is in charge of organizing elections.
Two-thirds of the Iranian people would like to be reconciled with the West. They don't like the fanaticism of the governing religious council. It's the only place in the world where the last six elections have been won by the more progressive candidate, two for president, two for the mayors, two for the parliament. So most people there are sympathetic to the world we Americans want to build, whether we're Republicans or Democrats. On the other hand, almost everybody there wants them to have nuclear power. They see it as a status symbol, and a sense of their own security.
A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.
It’s not a perfect situation. But when you have to choose between two bad options, you pick the one that saves the people you love and believe in most. You just do. Okay?
Three of the last four [elections], '06, '08, and '12, were disastrous for Republicans. And they were years in which we just we stayed quiet, we went along the get-along, we didn't stand on principle. The only year that was a good year for Republicans was 2010, when we painted in bold colors, not in pale pastels. We stood for principle. I think winning this fight right now is the most important thing we can do to see significant victories in 2014.
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.… You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?
Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.
I think there's so much feeling among young girls where they feel like they have to be this perfect thing - and they don't. Perfect people don't exist. Sometimes people need to be told it.
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