Republican Party United States Politicians

"This law, by and large, extends the same kind of crime-fighting tools we apply to gangs and mobsters to terrorists. That's not something that is an infringement of our civil liberties."

"There's no reason that patients can't have electronic access to their complete medical history... Just as people can check their bank account information online or using their ATM card, patients who want to should have electronic access to their medical records..."

"This whole thing is a big gamble, but it's probably the best gamble to take before throwing in the towel and allowing sectarian genocide to take over. I personally give this three to six months to find out."

"We don't have a tax revenue problem in Washington, we have a spending problem in Washington."

"Child support should do just that – support children, not the federal government."

"Working together, America's military, Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi people have won a major battle in the war on terrorism."

"But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism."

"I think so much depends on what happens in the next six months. If the president is determined to go ahead with this plan, and he appears to be determined, I hope it works—for our country, for Iraq, for our soldiers. I hope that I prove to be as wrong as I’ve ever been in my life."

"The fact that after millions of people across the country cast their votes that our political system is basically controlled by Joe Manchin of WV and Susan Collins of Maine makes no fucking sense."

"Madam President, January 22, 1997, Senator Collins cast her first roll call vote for Madeleine Albright to be Secretary of State. From that moment on, she has not missed one single, solitary vote; zero sick days, zero scheduling conflicts. Whether we were voting on war or peace, historic legislation, or the most routine and uncontroversial bills and nominations, the Senator has made sure that Maine got its say every single time. So here is some perspective. The longest consecutive games streak in Major League Baseball famously belonged to Cal Ripken, Jr. Well, our colleague from Caribou has lapped him three times and counting. And, by the way, the Iron Horse didn't have to plan around weekly air travel in and out of New England, all winter, every winter. Anybody who knows Senator Collins knows this moment is not really about a round number; it is about the approach which the number happens to reflect. Our colleague is diligent. She is devoted. Her level of preparation is unparalleled. She holds herself to the highest standards, and she delivers. It is in her blood. Both of our colleague's parents served separate terms as mayor of Caribou. But the Senator also draws inspiration from outside the gene pool. She rightly idolizes her predecessor from Maine, the legendary Margaret Chase Smith, but even Senator Smith's own impressive voting streak topped out just shy of 3,000. I am just sorry that today's milestone moment couldn't present our colleague with a challenge worthy of her skills. Lucky number 8,000 didn't even require a sprained ankle or a hasty exit from a departing airplane. So congratulations to our colleague on this moment and all that it represents."

"In this case, though, Collins chose not to listen to a survivor—or, more exactly, she found reasons not to listen. Murkowski felt differently. After her vote on Friday morning, she told reporters that she was on her way back to her office to work on a floor statement about her decision. Last month, a reporter asked Murkowski if she had ever had a #MeToo moment. Murkowski answered yes, but did not elaborate."

"Together, these two relatively centrist Republicans controlled the fate of Kavanaugh’s nomination—which had looked assured until a few weeks ago, when several women came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. (Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.) How did these two lawmakers, who have at times been treated as a pair on high-stakes votes, reach contrary ends?"

"Senator Collins has tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently experiencing mild symptoms. The Senator will isolate and work remotely in accordance with CDC guidelines"

"Collins voted for the GOP tax scam."

"I appreciated the instances when members from the other side of the aisle supported HUD's work, crossing partisan lines. Mario Diaz-Balart and Susan Collins were two Republicans who helped maximize HUD's impact on people in need."

"In a party that was less ideological and less dominated by rich, right-wing donors than today’s G.O.P., all of these points would be regarded as uncontroversial. According to a new CBS News poll, just twenty per cent of Americans approve of the Graham-Cassidy bill, and the earlier G.O.P. repeal proposals were just as unpopular. But, despite its chronic lack of public support, the G.O.P.’s effort to sabotage the health-care system came within a few votes of succeeding in the Senate. For now, at least, it appears to be dead. On Tuesday afternoon, Republican leaders reportedly agreed not to hold a vote on the Graham-Cassidy bill. If this really is the end of the effort to repeal Obamacare, a few Republicans of character will have played a key role. And history will recall that Susan Collins was in the vanguard."

"Contrary to the suspicions of some people on the right, Collins isn’t a closet Democrat. She voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and for all but two of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees. In 2010, she voted against the A.C.A.; in 2011 and 2015, she voted to repeal it. On many occasions, she has criticized the 2010 reform for offering Americans limited choices and high premiums and deductibles. But, unlike most of her G.O.P. colleagues, Collins has also defied the Party line and recognized some of the good that Obamacare has done."

"The country owes Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, a big vote of thanks. Absent her steadfastness over the past few months, the G.O.P. might have succeeded in blowing up Obamacare. If that had happened, many millions of Americans would now be facing the possibility of losing their health-insurance coverage, while countless seniors and sick people would be on the hook to pay much higher insurance premiums."

"Roe. Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article 3 of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent is not just a judicial policy, it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent. In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration. It is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances. The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance and fairness."

"We saw, on 6 January 2021, how ambiguities, simple law, were exploited. We need to prevent that from happening again. I’m hopeful that we can come up with a bipartisan bill that will make very clear that the vice-president’s role is simply ministerial, that he has no ability to halt the count"

"For the presidency, I don't think it really matters if it's a man or a woman, it has to be the right person for the job"

"I think women have demonstrated in leadership positions that they're capable of handling very difficult situations."

"If people want go-along, get-along politics, I am not their guy."

"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike."

"Obviously I would hope that women would be discouraged from having abortions if they know that there's an increased risk, but clearly if we care about women we should want them to know about this elevated risk. What's the damage of women being told some people think there's a link between abortion and breast cancer? What does that hurt? … All I've said is that studies show that there is a statistical link between abortion and breast cancer, an increased risk, and women before they have an abortion should be told. That's what I believe."

"It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress."

"We are always just one successful terrorist attack away from a nuclear disaster"

""Dumb as hell" - Richard Nixon described Thompson as not able "to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee's Democratic counsel." (see: The transcripts of the Nixon tapes published in "Abuse of Power: The New Watergate Tapes".)"

"They say that God protects drunks and children. I would add young morons to that list."

"Minor surgery is surgery that someone else is having"

"I heard Senator Sam Irvin of Watergate fame say something that stayed with me: 'If you can paint a really good picture of a cow, you don't have to write the word "cow" under it.'"

"My daddy always said that a man who walks around with a smile on his face all the time can't possibly know what's going on."

"Teaching Latin to someone like me in high school was somewhat like trying to teach a pig to dance. It's a waste of the teacher's time and it irritates the pig."

"I looked down on a quilt of clouds, bordered on the horizon by the blood-orange streaks of the setting sun. As the steady hum of the engine drowned out the chatter around me, I realized that I would probably be thinking about the implications of Watergate for the rest of my life. For the country, and for me it had been a significant point in time. (page 263)"

"Not once did an off-the-record comment return to haunt me. For example, my relationship with Walter Pincus, editor of the New Republic, one of the nation’s most liberal magazines, developed to the point were he understood our conversations went off the record without my having to say so. I never divulged anything of great substance, but many of my comments about personalities and my own prejudices could have been extremely embarrassing had he (or others) betrayed my confidence. (page 236)"

"In hindsight, I have come to believe the discovery of the tapes may prove to be an historic event in more than one way. At a time when the United States government acknowledges that 2 million conversations were overheard by authorized eavesdroppers in a twelve month period, and at least an equal number were being recorded by private dectecies, suspicious spouses, corporate spies, special agents, and blackmailers; at a time when people like me conduct their lives under the assumption that their telephone lines are tapped; and at a time when devices such as the bug-in-the-martini-olive are proliferating, the disastrous consequences that flowed from Nixon’s fateful decision to record White House conversations may serve to awaken the nation to the threat posed to the little privacy that remains to us. (page 92)"

"After sleeping late on Sunday, I was back at my desk that afternoon. I had two prime considerations. First, I wanted to be certain that the tapes were not a trap for the committee or that there was a significant bit of missing information that we lacked; experience taught me that matters of this importance do not usually fall into your lap without more complications that are immediately apparent. Second, if our information was legitimate, I wanted to be sure the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action. Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone’s interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee. Even though I had no authority to act for the committee, I decided to call Fred Buzhardt at home. Buzhardt was the only White House staff member with whom I had had any substantial contact. He had been unassuming and straightforward in his dealings with me. He never tried to enlist me in any White House strategy, to suggest that I relay confidential information, or to so any of the things that were probably assumed by many of the so-called sophisticates in Washington. (page 86)"

"As I reflected further, I convinced myself that Nixon had not had prior knowledge to the break-in, nor of the cover-up that followed. Even if culpability reached dangerously close to the president, I reasoned, surely his top aides would have shielded him from damaging information, not just to protect themselves, but also to allow him to tell the nation, in the best faith, that neither he nor his chief advisors were involved. (page 39)"

"I was operating under the theory that, even though Baker had been responsible for my appointment, I was representing all three minority senators-Baker, Edward Gurney of Florida, and Weicker. If differences arose within the minority there was no question about where my loyalty lay and whose directions I would take, but I believed that I should try to respond to the wishes of Weicker and Gurney in every way possible. (page 25)"

"When five men were captured in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee early in the morning on Saturday June 17, 1972 I had just completed a three-year stint as an assistant United States Attorney in Nashville. Ironically I had resigned the day before the break-in. I was about to become an unpaid political worker- the middle Tennessee director for the reelection campaign of Sen. Howard Baker. (page 3)"

"We can't forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, he clearly had had WMD. He clearly had had the beginnings of a nuclear program."

"I thought Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. I think this platform originally came out as a response to particularly Roe v. Wade because of that. Before Roe v. Wade, states made those decisions. I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred Thompson disagrees with. That's what freedom is all about. I think Roe v. Wade hopefully one day will be overturned, and we can go back to the pre-Roe v. Wade days."

"Some of our folks went to Washington to drain the swamp and made partnership with the alligators instead."

"This country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other nations in the history of the world combined, and I'm tired of people feeling like they've got to apologize for America."

"The average 20-year-old serving us in Iraq knows more about their country's national security than the average 20-year political veteran serving in the Congress today."

"I'm not above acting like a seal every once in a while and waiting for the next fish, I just don't want to do it all the time."

"I often say after eight years in Washington, I longed for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood."

"Where I stand doesn't depend on where I'm standing."

"I have not been convicted of anything."

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."