Republican Party United States Politicians

"The story of widows and orphans now wandering amid the ravines of the rural counties of my native state seeking protection and maintenance from others who are yet unable, on account of their own poverty, to grant them aid. I could dwell upon the sorrows of poor women, with their helpless infants, cast upon the world, homeless and destitute, deprived of their natural protectors by the red hand of the midnight assassin. I could appeal to you, members upon this floor, as husbands and fathers, to picture to yourselves the desolation of your own happy firesides should you be suddenly snatched away from your loved ones. Think of gray-haired men, whose fourscore years are almost numbered, the venerated heads of peaceful households, without warning murdered for political opinion's sake."

"We intend to continue to vote so long as the government gives us the right and necessary protection; I know that right accorded to us now will never be withheld in the future if left to the Republican Party."

"He was twice married, the first time to Miss Dolores Otero, daughter of Judge Antonio José Otero and his wife, Chaves de Otero. This happy union occurred March 15, 1851; from it eighteen children were born, many dying in early infancy. ...Mrs. Perea died in 1866. He was again married to Miss Gabriela Montoya, the daughter of Gerónimo Montoya and Lupita Perea de Montoya... The marriage occurred in 1875, and of which... eighteen children were born, ten of whom survive their father."

"Colonel Perea was four times elected to the Territorial Legislature, the first time in the year 1851, when he was barely eligible on account of his age. Having in mind a trip to the interior of Mexico, for which he was at the time preparing, he protested against being named as a candidate and later declined to be sworn in as a member. His second election was in 1858, this time to the House of Representatives... His third election occurred in 1866, when he was sent to the lower house... In the year 1884 he was chosen a member of the Territorial Council, or upper house of the Assembly... This was the year of the "rump council," the birth of the split in the republican party of New Mexico, which lasted for over ten years, resulting in sending Anthony Joseph, democrat, as delegate to Congress five successive times."

"Throughout Colonel Perea's long and useful life he was noted for his industry and conservative opinions. In the Legislature, nothing pleased him more than a respectful hearing from those opposed to his views concerning any public measure."

"Bills that Failed to Pass... No. 31. An Act for the relief of Francisco Perea."

"The name of Francisco Perea, late Lieutenant-Colonel Perea's Battalion, New Mexico Militia Infantry, and pay him a pension at the rate of twenty dollars per month."

"This writing made on the 10th day of June, in the year of our Lord, 1874, between Francisco Perea of the first part of the town of Bernalillo, county of Bernalillo, and Territory of New Mexico, and Jose Leandro Perea, of the town of Bernalillo, county of Bernalillo, and Territory of New Mexico, party of the second part, Witnesseth, that he said party of the first part, for and in consideration of the sum of $1500.00 money of the United States of America, to him in hand paid by the said party of the first part the receipt of which is by this acknowledged, has sold, conceded, contracted, trespassed, granted, delivered and confirmed and by these presents—concede, contract, sell, grant, deliver, trespass and confirm to the said party of the second part and his heirs and assigns forever, all that portion of land situated in the town of Bernalillo... and is bounded as follows, to wit: On the north by a public road and land of Florencio Sandoval, east the hills, on the south by lands of the church of Bernalillo and by the property of Steve B. Elkins, on the east by the Rio Norte and the public road that cuts the properties of Florencio Sandoval, Nathan Bibo, Guadalupe Valdez and the lands of the parish of Bernalillo, together with all and every right, privilege and belongings..."

"Colonel Perea, having formed a very exalted opinion of character of Mr. Lincoln, and of his conduct of state affairs, favored his renomination at the Baltimore convention, convened in that city June 7, 1864. John S. Watts, Joshua Jones, and Francisco Perea were the accredited delegates New Mexico, which was for the first time represented in a national convention."

"I ask the unanimous consent of the Convention to allow the delegates from New Mexico to record their votes for President and Vice President of the United States."

"The families of Armijo, Chaves, Peréa, and Ortiz are par excellence the ricos of New Mexico—indeed, all the wealth of the province is concentrated in their hands; and a more grasping set of people, and more hard-hearted oppressors of the poor, it would be difficult to find in any other part of Mexico, where the rights or condition of the lower classes are no more considered, than in civilised countries is the welfare of dogs and pigs."

"Colonel Perea, always fond of the higher dramatic art, was present at Ford's theater when President Lincoln was assassinated, his seat being in the orchestra, immediately in front of and a little below the President's box. The play being performed that night was known as "Our English Cousins" and was given by the Irish-American comedian, John McCullough. In the midst of the performance a pistol shot was heard near the box occupied by Mr Lincoln and a few friends that were with him. In a very short time all knew the president had been shot."

"Dear Sir: Your note of the 15th ultimo has just been received, Herewith you will find the message of the governor of New Mexico, indorsing the policy of putting the Navajo Indians on the reservation at Bosque Redondo. The legislature has unanimously approved this policy. Dr. Steck himself approved it before he left New Mexico, as I can prove. Every intelligent man in the country approves it. It will be the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to New Mexico and Arizona, the interfering with this policy. The Indians will go on as before. The great thoroughfare over the 35th parallel will be interrupted by them; people going to the new gold fields will be murdered; and, after another fruitless season, you will come to this policy at last. It is a pity that other motives, besides what is best for the country and the most humane for the Indians, should work to the disadvantage of the people, just now. We have made a good beginning, and if "let alone" this will be the last Navajo war. Colonel Collins, who for years has been the superintendent, indorses the policy throughout, as you see by his paper. What motive influences Dr. Steck? We had a sharp fight with the Navajoes on the 5th instant. You will see the account in the papers."

"To the Hon. José Guadalupe Gallegos Speaker of the House of Representatives: SIR: To the resolution of the House, asking me to give my reasons for declining to take a seat in that Hon. House, as a member from the county of Bernalillo, I have the honor to respond: In the first place, I never consented to my name being placed before the people as a candidate for the office to which l was elected and secondly, I would inform the House, that the health of my family, makes my presence absolutely indispensable. I was not aware that it was my duty to resign after I had been elected, or I would have done so, in order to give the people of my county an opportunity to elect another in my place. With assurances to the Hon. House, that I would be very happy to accompany them in providing for the good of our common country, if the matters above mentioned would permit me. I am, Mr. Speaker with much respect, Your Obd. Servant, FRANCISCO PEREA"

"Following the receipt of the gladsome news great joy and enthusiasm seemed to fill every heart; and during the night following, the occasion was celebrated by immense processions of men and boys marching through the principal streets to the music of many brass bands, the firing of cannon, and the discharge of anvils. It is needless to say all of us New Mexicans heartily joined in to swell the throng, which continued its hilarity throughout the night. No thought then entered my mind that in the short space of three years I would be a delegate in Congress, thereby admitted to the presence of the greatest statesman in consultation about affairs in the Territory of New Mexico."

"Dr. [Michael] Steck [superintendent of Indian affairs for New Mexico,] showed me a report which he is going to submit to the Indian department here, in which he disapproves your policy to colonize the Navajo Indians, decidedly. He made several other allusions to your campaign against them, which I did not like nor believe. He thinks it impossible to put the Navajo nation on the Pecos for the small space of irrigable lands at the Bosque.. Fort Sumner.]"

"Colonel Perea, was early in the summer of the year 1865, renominated as a candidate to the Thirty-ninth Congress. He made a vigorous campaign and would have been triumphantly elected had he refused to support a few of his most intimate friends, among whom was General Carleton, then commander of the military department, with headquarters at Santa Fe. The opposition concentrated their efforts against General Carleton... His character as a soldier was assailed in all portions of New Mexico. ...Colonel Perea failed of reëlection, but his standing at Washington was such that he was able to control the Federal appointments for the Territory until the close of Johnson's administration in 1869."

"It seemed to be the policy of the Secretary of War to lose no opportunity to throw a stone at those who had made themselves prominent in the Rebellion. Even if Sherman had made a mistake, his great services entitled him to better treatment than he received at the hands of Mr. Stanton. How deeply he felt this treatment was shown when he arrived in Washington with his troops, and was invited upon the platform whence the President and his Cabinet were reviewing them. He deliberately refused to take Stanton's hand when the secretary stepped forward to greet him. It is now twenty years since the interesting events referred to took place; most of the actors in those scenes have gone to their final resting places. The passions which animated men in high places have died out, but Grant and Sherman still live, and are gratefully remembered by their countrymen for the invaluable services they rendered during the most trying times of the Republic's existence."

"Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means."

"Many persons believed, or pretended to believe, and confidently asserted, that freed slaves would not make good soldiers; they would lack courage, and could not be subjected to military discipline. Facts have shown how groundless were these apprehensions. The slave has proved his manhood, and his capacity as an infantry soldier, at Milliken's Bend, at the assault upon Port Hudson, and the storming of Fort Wagner. The apt qualifications of the colored man for artillery service have long been known and recognized by the naval service."

"There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen. Now he belongs to the ages."

"The great crisis facing the country was the rebellion and anybody in the North who wanted to preserve the Union now found the principal enemy to be those Southern slave owners who had broken up the country. The institution which sustained them and the institution they went to war to defend was slavery. And more and more northerners became convinced of that. As a consequence, a lot of them went the whole way over, from being conservative, pro-Southern, pro-slavery Democrats to becoming radical Republicans. Benjamin Butler is a good example, and Edwin M. Stanton is another one."

"The fact is, and the thing that is so appalling to me, is that the President, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't in righteous indignation rise up and say "get out of here. You are in the office of the President of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? This is the Presidency of the United States!", and throw them out of his office, and pick up the phone and call the Department of Justice and tell them "there is obstruction of justice going on, someone is trying to buy the silence of a witness."But my President didn't do that. He sat there, and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light."

"Ann Coulter has become a legend in her own mind."

"Let's knock out the psychobabble. He was a pervert, a child molester, he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say we don't need Michael Jackson. He died, he had some talent, fine. There's men and women dying every day in Afghanistan. Let's give them the credit they deserve."

"We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy. I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen."

"This is Claude Kirk, Governor of Florida. Do you read my press? Then you know that I'm a tree-shakin' son of a bitch"

"If I'm elected, I may have to sign your death warrants."

"How to dodge a bicycle"

"Russell, you do not understand the theory of the five minute debate. The object is to convey to the House in the space of five minutes either information or disinformation. You have consumed several periods of five minutes this afternoon without doing either."

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils of the world can be cured by legislation."

"The people of Virginia have spoken by a margin of 57-43. They’ve already enshrined in the Virginia Constitution that gay marriage is not permitted, so unless there is another effort to change the Constitution, that matter is settled. That is the law of the land and, look, reasonable people can disagree on these things. That’s what the law is now. That’s something that I support. That was the right decision."

"This has been both a heartbreaking and humbling period of time for me and for my family. But what I can control is how I react to things and what I can control is how to make Virginia a better state."

"WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse; and WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today; and WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to reflect upon our Commonwealth's shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present; and WHEREAS, Confederate historical sites such as the White House of the Confederacy are open for people to visit in Richmond today; and WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, "...all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace."; and WHEREAS, this defining chapter in Virginia's history should not be forgotten, but instead should be studied, understood and remembered by all Virginians, both in the context of the time in which it took place, but also in the context of the time in which we live, and this study and remembrance takes on particular importance as the Commonwealth prepares to welcome the nation and the world to visit Virginia for the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Civil War, a four-year period in which the exploration of our history can benefit all; NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert McDonnell, do hereby recognize April 2010 as CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH in our COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens."

"We are broke, have an unconscionable amount in credit card debt already, and this Inaugural is killing us!"

"Fight any attempts to redefine family by allowing special rights for homosexuals or single-parent unwed mothers."

"The giftedness of the Republican philosophy is that it embraces the talent and worth of all peoples, while Democrats seek to shepherd a nation of powerless incompetents."

"I don’t think any politician wants to be exposed as doing the things Bob McDonnell did. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crime or not."

"As the family goes, so goes the nation."

"Professor Henry Holzer of the Brooklyn Law School believes that together the Belle Terre (1974) and Moore (1971) decisions stand for the proposition that it is a collectivist-statist ideology, not a concept of individual rights, that lies at the base of official government thinking about the family. Further, when the Court reviews state definitions of, or intrusions into, the family, "the determinative criterion will be the importance of the state interest involved." Riga concludes that in 15 years of Supreme Court cases ending in 1979, the view of marriage as an indissoluble lifelong commitment had been abandoned. In its wake is the perverted notion of liberty that each individual should be able to live out his sexual life in any way he chooses without interference from the state. The consequences of such thinking have been previously discussed, and ironically create the very problems that society now calls on the federal government to solve."

"For at least 8 years, Republican domestic policies have demonstrated that man is capable of doing good only in an atmosphere of liberty and faith, not compulsion and atheism. However, man's basic nature is inclined towards evil, and when the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality, the government must restrain, punish, and deter."

"In 1973, the Court in the Roe v. Wade decision gave the individual the right to destroy the unborn through abortion, and three years later in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth it extended the supremacy of individual privacy over parental authority in the child's abortion decision. In his seminal article on the Court's role in shaping a national family policy, scholar Peter J. Riga suggests that in Danforth, "marriage is seen as a tenuous union formed by the consensual agreement of the two individuals who remain autonomous and independent throughout the relationship." He further asserts that by the end of the 1970s, the Court had, for all practical purposes, obliterated the difference between marriage and non-marriage, replacing the sacred covental view of marriage with the "positivistic view that a marriage is but an act of the state, which powers the state may delegate in appropriate cricumstances." In other cases, the abuses of the judicial doctrines of "in loco parentis" and "parens patriae," particularly in such areas as education, discipline of children, and child custody, have fostered subversion of the role of the parent in favor of ultimate decisions on family and children matters by the state and federal governments."

"In Republican rhetoric and policies on crime and welfare reform, one discerns a view of man as an accountable and responsible moral agent. In their positions on economic growth, Republicans endorse the provision of opportunity, not guarantees, by getting "government out of the way, off the backs of households and entrepreneurs, so the people could take charge." In principle the party has supported a pro-family agenda: religious freedom to include voluntary prayer in public schools; a human life amendment; the appointment of judges at all levels who respect the sanctity of human life and traditional family values; and the right of private property as the cornerstone of liberty."

"Republican policies must aim at the most destructive trend in the family disintegration: the undermining of parental authority through parental abdication and government usurpation. Notwithstanding Democratic rhetoric to the contrary, it is not uncompassionate and anti-family to mandate parental consent for all decisions made by minors in and out of school, and to refuse government aid to those who reject the traditional values of responsibility and accountability. While no government program can make people be good, policies should reward people when they are, and not subsidize them when they are not. For example, every level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals and fornicators. The cost of sin should fall on the sinner not the taxpayer. While such thinking may be attacked for lacking political realism in a changing world, it is imperative that government stand firm in support of traditional family values."

"The United States Supreme Court dealt among the harshest blows to the American family and traditional morality. A century ago, the Court demonstrated profound respect for the traditional views of marriage and family, stating in Maynard v. Hill that "marriage is the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress." However in 1965 with Griswold v. Connecticut, the court embarked on [a] dualistic path by attempting to create a view of liberty based on radical individualism, while facilitating statist control of select family issues. The Court postulated a new view of marriage by asserting that "preservation of marital privacy" precludes state interference with the right to use contraceptives, even though the state had long been empowered to regulate the legal and sexual relationships of marriage. In Eisenstadt v. Baird the activist Court illogically extended the Griswold notion of "marital privacy" to unmarried persons, at a time when every state in the union made sexual intercourse between unmarried persons a crime."

"The vast majority of American children have been educated in the American public school system, in which textbooks and courses of instruction are increasingly oriented to reflect humanist views and a secular philosophy. The undermining of respect for parental authority in favor of state direction or individual autonomy, and the contemporaneous purging of religious influence in the public schools has impaired the development of healthy family members. Values that had historically provided strength to the family, such as firm discipline and corporal punishment, patriotism, and academic achievement, were either attacked, or given token attention."

"Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall."

"My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex...very rarely [transmitted]."

"That bullying this is the biggest lark out there."

"All I can say is if this is a hurricane then East Tennessee has one about every other week. Seriously. It's not that bad.Some minor wind and intermittent light to medium rain. Nothing bad at all yet."