Archive: Verbatim
A few miles from here, Congress is in the final stages of a fateful debate about the future of health insurance in America. It’s a debate that’s raged not just for the past year but for the past century. One thing when you’re in the White House, you’ve got a lot of history books around you. And so I’ve been reading up on the history here. Teddy Roosevelt, Republican, was the first to advocate that everybody get health care in this country. Every decade since, we’ve had Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, from Harry Truman to Richard Nixon to JFK to Lyndon Johnson to — every single President has said we need to fix this system. It’s a debate that’s not only about the cost of health care, not just about what we’re doing about folks who aren’t getting a fair shake from their insurance companies. It’s a debate about the character of our country — about whether we can still meet the challenges of our time; whether we still have the guts and the courage to give every citizen, not just some, the chance to reach their dreams.
If I have to talk to him, I’ll talk to him. At the end of the day, when we take a vote, he’s not going to be out there supporting me and running my elections. It’s going to be up to me to run my election.
- Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tx), proving that morons who are only concerned with staying in office for the sake of staying in office aren’t confined to just one party.
If I had any authority at Fox News right now, Glenn Beck would be seeking economic justice.
– Pastor Marty Duren of the Southern Baptist Convention, challenging Beck’s call for Christians to leave churches that support social and economic justice.
For me, I had an audience of one. That was my dad. He’s the only person whose opinion mattered to me.
— Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), in an interview with the Washington Post, about seeking a ‘fuller life’ by retiring from Congress.
I think that there is a real shot we are going to get slaughtered in elections this fall if we aren’t leading the efforts to reform Washington. We campaigned in ‘06 and ‘08, and if voters don’t see that change, we haven’t lived up to that promise.
— Steve Hildebrand, deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, in an interview on CNN.
It’s hard for us to understand, if I can put it that way.
— United Kingdom conservative party leader David Cameron, quoted by Vanity Fair, on Sarah Palin’s popularity.
I’m naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?
— Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), quoted by Roll Call, about an encounter with the White House chief of staff in the House gym.
Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.
— White House political adviser David Axelrod, quoted by the New York Times.
I worried most about Senator John Edwards. He was a fresh face, articulate and engaging, and attractive to the point of being almost too pretty.
— Karl Rove, writing in his memoir Courage and Consequence, about the Democratic presidential candidate he feared — while being titillated by — most in 2004.
Single men might not attempt so many sexual conquests if they knew that the government would require them to pay support for any child that their exploits brought into the world.
— Mitt Romney, in his new book No Apologies, making, as Ben Smith notes, a “questionable assertion.”
