Favourite Republican quotes...

This isn't a topic to ridicule Republicans...

But every so often a Republican will say something intelligent (this became much less common during the Nixon presidency).

Barry Goldwater:

"Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."

One was regarding gays in the military and was something along the lines of, "To be in the army, you only have to SHOOT straight."

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to
shoot straight. - Barry Goldwater

Like many libertarian leaning type of people, I happen to have a soft spot for the late Mr. Goldwater. Lyndon Johnson painted Goldwater as an absolute violence loving crazy while Johnson himself was a man of piece, but then Johnson turned around and significantly upped our entanglement in Vietnam.

Some other good Goldwater quotes:

Well, you find in conservatism the same thing you found in liberalism: a split. You had liberals like Hubert Humphrey that were really trying to make the country go with liberalism, and you had others that didn't care what they said or what they appropriated, just so they made a noise that was formerly unacceptable to American thinking. Now, conservatism has its others too. We have conservatives who literally want to do everything in the bag, and that's not possible. We have other conservatives like Ronald Reagan, myself and most conservatives, who want to make progress on the proven values of the past, which to me is a whole essence of conservatism. This doesn't mean we have to bring in abortion or school prayer or every other thing in the book or everything you find under the rocks. Make your progress on the proven values, the Constitution, the free enterprise system, and don't mess around with it.

"When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."


Goldwater on President Clinton: "The best thing Clinton could do – I think I wrote him a letter about this, but I'm not sure – is to shut up.... He has no discipline." But he said this about Hillary Rodham Clinton: "If he'd let his wife run business, I think he'd be better off."

"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."

and the quote that comes to mind is from Ronald Reagan,
in the context of funding international family planning:
"Economic growth is the best contraceptive."

Strategically I don't agree, but the point he makes is valid.
When's the last time you saw a wealthy twelve person family?

Reagan.

"Facts are Stupid things"

Cheers
Drifter

"Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached."

As Jon Stewart would say, "Whaaaaaa???" :crazy:

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency."
Theodore Roosevelt, 'The Strenuous Life,' 1900

"When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."
Barry Goldwater on conservative religious activists in the GOP

"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they never existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book..."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

- Trent Lott

And, of course, the ever popular, "I am not a crook." (I only play one in the oval office).

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency."
Theodore Roosevelt, 'The Strenuous Life,' 1900

They cannot justify the unnecessary war in Iraq by what we know now was not even an imminent threat in other words.

"I will never apologize for the United States of America - I don't care what the facts are." - George Bush

Oh wait a minute...this was about smart remarks. Sorry, force of habbit. How about this one:

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear, kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic ferver, with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstruous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it..." - Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

and thanks for the great MacArthur quote.

The real terrorists are in this administration, keeping us in a perpetual state of fear,using Munchausen politics in order to fight an immoral war. The quote is perfect, thanks.

"You're all free"

-A. Lincoln

I'm paraphrasing, of course.

... Reagan's economic advisor at OMB, "ketchup is a vegetable."

"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy."