Conservative Myths - What Every American Should Know About Republican Politics & Politicians

Classic Conservative Quotations, The All-Time Best Conservative Quotes

Let's take a stroll through the minds, thoughts and statements of prominent conservatives... in their own words... to glimpse just what those rascals really believe! A word of caution: it usually isn't good.

Donald Trump | Mitt Romney | George W. Bush | Dick Cheney | Ronald Reagan
Richard Nixon | George H. W. Bush | Barry Goldwater | Others | 9/11 Amnesia


Donald Trump
Donald Trump has uttered so many outrageous and completely fabricated quotations that we are prompted to divide them into four categories: "Narcissist Natterings," "Flip-Flops," "Alt-Facts" and "Seriously Salacious." Sure, some of them qualify for multiple categories; we can only do our best to sort them for you. Ready to indulge the mind of conservatism's new crown prince of seflishness and stupidity. OK, here we go:

NARCISSIST NATTERINGS:

"Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich."
-- Donald Trump

"I don’t wear a 'rug'—it’s mine. And I promise not to talk about your massive plastic surgeries that didn’t work."
-- Donald Trump, to Cher

"When I think I'm right, nothing bothers me."
-- Donald Trump

"I will be so good at the military your head will spin."
-- Donald Trump

"Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest - and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault."
-- Donald Trump

"I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created."
-- Donald Trump

"Romney — I have a Gucci store that's worth more than Romney."
-- Donald Trump

"When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same."
-- Donald Trump, a stunning admission of his attention span and maturity level.

FLIP-FLOPS:

"Why is Barack Obama constantly issuing executive orders that are major power grab of authority?"
-- Donald Trump, 2012.

"Record number of executive orders in first 100 days!"
-- Donald Trump, 2017.

"We can't continue to allow China to rape our country. We're like the piggy bank that's being robbed. We can’t continue to allow china to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world."
-- Donald Trump, 2016, but once president Trump turned completely soft on China.

"On day one of a Trump administration, the U.S. Treasury Department will designate China a currency manipulator."
-- Donald Trump, 2016.

"China is not a currency manipulator."
-- Donald Trump, 2017.

"China can solve the problem of North Korea if they wanted to but they taunt us. They say, ‘well, we don’t really have control.’ Without China, North Korea doesn’t even eat."
-- Donald Trump, 2016.

"After listening to the Chinese president (Xi Jinping) for ten minutes, I realized it (North Korea) is not easy."
-- Donald Trump, 2017.

"Obamacare. We're going to repeal it, we're going to replace it, get something great. Repeal it, replace it, get something great! I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now."
-- Donald Trump, 2015, talking up his magical healthcare system.

"Obamacare is collapsing. It's in bad shape, and we're going to take action. There's going to be no slowing down, there's going to be no waiting and no more excuses by anybody. It's actually very simple; it's called good healthcare."
-- Donald Trump, 2017, explaining how quick and easy repealing and replacing Obamacare would be.

"I have to tell you, it's an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."
-- Donald Trump, 2017, admitting how stupid and weak he is.

"It's very easy to be presidential."
-- Donald Trump, 2016.

"I thought it would be easier."
-- Donald Trump, 2017.

"Listen, you motherfuckers, we're going to tax you 25 percent!"
-- Donald Trump, 2016, blustering about China, but has imposed no tax at all, much less 25 percent, since becoming president.

"If I ever ran for office, I’d do better as a Democrat than as a Republican, and that’s not because I’d be more liberal, because I’m conservative. But the working guy would elect me. He likes me. When I walk down the street, those cabbies start yelling out their windows."
-- Donald Trump, acknowledging that Republican ideology doesn't much suit the working guy, but nevertheless he ended up running as a Republican, and sure enough, not helping the working guy.

SHEER LIES AND/OR STUPIDITY:

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
-- Donald Trump

"I have a great relationship with the blacks."
-- Donald Trump, from the man

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
-- Donald Trump

"Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice."
-- Donald Trump, on the great 19th Century African American who Trump seems to have just learned about and thinks is still alive.

"I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good."
-- Donald Trump, claiming that he had coined the phrase 'Prime the pump' with regard to federal economic policy. This term goes back at least as far back Franklin Roosevelt.

SERIOUSLY SALACIOUS:

"Well, someone’s doing the raping, Don! I mean, somebody’s doing it. Who’s doing the raping? Who’s doing the raping?"
-- Donald Trump, defending his statement that most rapes in the country come from Latino immigrants. In fact the number of immigrant Latino rapes is far less than those by whites, blacks and non-immigrant Latinos.

Mitt Romney
Other than Trump (who is in a league of his own), has there ever been a major party presidential candidate who has exhibited less core conviction and more of a propensity to say anything and take any position to get elected than Mitt Romney? Ever? In all of American history? Maybe world history? This guy is the all-time champion of flip-flopping. Mitt Romney, the third straight spoiled little rich kid that the Republican have thrown up (literally and figuratively) as their presidential nominee is in reality just a bully (apparently from a young age), a vulture corporatist, a shape-shifting oligarch who has absolutely no business anywhere near the White House.

"PETA is not happy that my dog likes fresh air."
-- Mitt Romney, responding to criticisms from animal lovers following revelations that he had once placed his dog in a carrier on the roof of his car during a 12-hour trip.

"I like firing people..."
-- Mitt Romney

"My wife drives a couple of Cadillacs."
-- Mitt Romney

"I love this state. The trees are the right height."
-- Mitt Romney

"I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much."
-- Mitt Romney, who made $374,000 in speaking fees in one year, and, indeed, that's not very much to a guy worth $250 Million.

"I'm not concerned about the very poor."
-- Mitt Romney. Obviously.

"I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners."
-- Mitt Romney, an attempt to bond with the regular guys.

"Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better."
-- Mitt Romney, whose preference is to privatize everything. This statement reveals the true Romney: an uber-capitalist.

"Corporations are people, my friends."
-- Mitt Romney

"I'm severely conservative."
-- Mitt Romney

Conservative Myth Alert "Forty-seven percent of the country are people who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. "
-- Mitt Romney

Flip-flopper, flip flopper Mitt Romney
ETCH-A-SKETCHING MITT:
    ON IRAQ WAR:
    2008 - Conservative Mitt: "It was the right decision to go into Iraq. I supported it at the time. I support it now."
    -- Mitt Romney, Mr. Conservative.

    2012 - Liberal Mitt: "We don't want another Iraq. We don't want another Afghanistan. That's not the right course for us."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching toward the center in the final debate of the 2012 campaign.

    ON WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN:
    2011 - Conservative Mitt: "Announcing a withdrawal date, that was wrong. The Taliban may not have watches, but they do have calendars."
    -- Mitt Romney, Mr. Conservative.

    2012 - Liberal Mitt: "Well we're going to be finished by 2014. And when I'm president we'll make sure we have our troops out by the end of 2014."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching toward the center in the final debate of the 2012 campaign.

    ON AGGRESSION TOWARD IRAN:
    2007 - Conservative Mitt: "When they see the military option in our hand, a possible blockade or aerial strikes, they recognize we mean business."
    -- Mitt Romney, bellicose warmongerer.

    2011 - Conservative Mitt: "We should have built a credible threat of military action."
    -- Mitt Romney, bellicose warmongerer.

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "We should have communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They're not just on the table, they are in our hands. "
    -- Mitt Romney, bellicose warmongerer.

    2012 - Liberal Mitt: "We must persuade Iran not to have nuclear weapons through peaceful and diplomatic means. We want a peaceful planet."
    -- Mitt Romney, Aahhh... Mitten the Kitten, etch-a-sketching abruptly to the center in the final debate before the election.

    ON HEALTH CARE:
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "This is something which I think this country needs... I want universal coverage! I want everyone in Massachusetts and in this country to have insurance. I support universal health care."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator from Massachusetts.

    2006 - Liberal Mitt: "This is a politician's dream. This initiative helps our citizens, helps our health care system, and helps our commonwealth. Senator Kennedy helped gain federal support to make the vision real. His work in Washington and behind the scenes in Beacon Hill was absolutely essential. Speaker DiMasi endorsed the individual mandate, providing key elements to our health care plan to get everyone insured. He insisted on Medicare rate increases be tied to improving quality and efficiency. Every citizen with comprehensive health insurance, small businesses able to conveniently buy insurance for their employees at a cost competitive with big businesses, medical transparency... and beginning to rein in health care inflation. Of course there's a long road ahead, and no guarantees when you set out on such a bold path that everything will work out as planned. But Massachusetts, once again, is taking a giant leap forward."
    -- Mitt Romney, as governor of Massachusetts signing the Massachusetts health care bill now known as "RomneyCare," the model for the U.S. Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as "ObamaCare." NOTE: "RomneyCare" and subsequently "ObamaCare" are programs designed on a blueprint first conceived by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

    2006 - Liberal Mitt: "This is something the Democrats have talked about, and a goal we share, getting everyone insured, and solving the issue in a Republican way, which is applying a personal responsibility principle (individual mandate), reforming the market (more strictly regulating the insurance companies), and allowing people to buy private health care insurance that they can take with them from job to job that's entirely affordable. So it's a Republican way of solving a problem that we face as a nation."
    -- Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts explaining "RomneyCare" to Fox News

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "ObamaCare (modeled almost precisely on RomneyCare) is wrong; it was bad medicine; it's bad for the economy, and I will repeal it."
    -- Mitt Romney, pandering to the Tea Party in the Republican primaries.

    ON SOCIAL SECURITY:
    2007 - Liberal Mitt: "I'm not in favor of privatizing Social Security or making cuts."
    -- Mitt Romney, playing word games with a questioner.

    2007 - Conservative Mitt: "The president (George W. Bush) says let's have private accounts, and take the surplus money that's being gathered now in Social Security and put it into private accounts. That works."
    -- Mitt Romney, approximately a year before the stock market crashed (and would have taken all those retirees "private accounts" with it).

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "No one is talking about restructuring Social Security or Medicare for current retirees or for those that are near retirement. For those under 55, the answer is let's talk about it."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative. If the plan is so good, why shouldn't current retirees or those near participate?

    ON MINIMUM WAGE:
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "I think the minimum wage outght to keep pace with inflation. I think the minimum wage is a good thing to have in our country and I think it ought to be updated."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator of Massachusetts.

    2006 - Conservative Mitt: "There's no question raising the minimum wage excessively causes a loss of jobs."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON EARMARKS (PORK):
    2002 - Liberal Mitt: "I'm a big believer in getting money from where the money is, and the money is in Washington. I learned from running the Olympics that you can get money there to help build economic opportunities. We actually got over $410 million from the federal government; that is a huge increase over anything ever done before. We did that by going after every agency of government. That kind of creativity I want to bring to everything we do (in Massachusetts)."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for governor of Massachusetts.

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "Republicans spent too much money, borrowed too much money, earmarked too much. In this race, I'm the only guy who hasn't spent time in Washington."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching presidential candidate.

    ON ABORTION RIGHTS:
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "I believe abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I believe that since Roe v Wade has been the law for 20 years that we should sustain and support it. And I sustain and support that law and the right of a woman to make that choice. We can believe what we want, but will will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me waivering on that."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator from Massachusetts.

    2002 - Liberal Mitt: "With regards to my views on protecting a woman's right to choose, I've been very clear on that. I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose. And I'm devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard. I am pro-choice."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for governor of Massachusetts.

    2008 - Conservative Mitt: "I was an avidly pro-life governor; I'm an avidly pro-life individual. As a pro-life Republican, I am in favor of having the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON GUN CONTROL:
    2002 - Liberal Mitt: "We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them. I won't chip away at them. I believe they help protect us and provide for our safety. I'm sure my positions won't make me the hero of the NRA."
    -- Mitt Romney, while governor of Massachusetts he backed two gun-control measures strongly opposed by the National Rifle Assocaition and other gun-rights groups. Romney signed the nation's first ban on assault weapons in Massachusetts and raised fees on gun owners by 400%.

    2008 - Conservative Mitt: "I support the Second Amendment. I've been a hunter pretty much all my life."
    -- Mitt Romney, lying through his teeth. Later his campaign admitted Romney had only been hunting twice in his life. He also said he had a gun of his own: another bald lie; at the time he did not have a gun of his own. The Boston Glove quipped on the blatant falsehood, "Leave it to Mitt Romney to shoot himself in the foot with a gun he doesn't own."

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "My view is that we have the Second Amendment rights to bear arms, and in this country my view is that we should not add new legistlation. I do not believe in new laws restricting gun ownership and gun use."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON MONEY/LOBBYISTS IN POLITICS:
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "In this race I understand Ted Kennedy will spend about $10 million. I think that's wrong. That's not his own money; that's money from other people. To get that kind of money you've got to cozy up as an incumbent to all the special interest groups who raise money for you. That kind of relationship has an influence on the way you're going to vote. These kinds of associations between money and politics, in my view, are wrong!"
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator from Massachusetts.

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: Mitt Romney has accepted over $75 million just in the 2012 presidential election cycle. Prominent conservative lobbyists for special interests are closely associated with his campaign, and his Top 10 donors are all from Wall Street.

    ON IMMIGRATION REFORM:
    2005 - Liberal Mitt: "I think an amnesty program... which is what the president (George W. Bush) has proposed... those are reasonable proposals."
    -- Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts.

    2006 - Liberal Mitt: "With these 11 million people here illegally, let's have them registered, know who they are, those that are here paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process towards application for citizenship."
    -- Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts.

    2007 - Conservative Mitt:"One simple rule: no amnesty, no special pathway to citizenship."
    -- Mitt Romney, presidential candidate etch-a-sketching toward the right.

    ON REAGANOMICS (TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS):
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator from Massachusetts.

    1997 - Conservative Mitt: "The right way to proceed when we face the kind of challenges we face is to pursue the strategy which Ronald Reagan pursued when we faced the challenges of the last century."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON THE AUTO INDUSTRY BAILOUT:
    2008 - Liberal Mitt: "I'm not willing to sit back and say, 'Too bad for Michigan, Too bad for the car industry, Too bad for the people who people who lost their jobs; they're gone forever."
    -- Mitt Romney, presidential candidate running in the Michigan primary.

    2008 - Liberal Mitt: "I think there is need for economic stimulus... and government can help make that up in a very difficult time."
    -- Mitt Romney, presidential candidate on the Bush TARP bank bailouts.

    2008 - Conservative Mitt: "Let Detroit go bankrupt! If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed. Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."
    -- Mitt Romney, arguing against government loans to General Motors and Chrysler. In 2009, the Obama administration approved $80 billion in loans. Though the loans were unpopular at the time outside of the auto industry's home turf, almost all non-partisan economist say the bailout was a huge success. Most of the loans have already been repaid, far ahead of schedule, the U.S. taxpayers made interest on the deal, and GM and Chrysler are leaner, meaner and earning healthy profits again. On the auto bailout, as with almost every other issue, Romney was 100% wrong.

    ON THE TARP BANK BAILOUTS:
    2008 - Liberal Mitt: "The TARP program… was nevertheless necessary to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures."
    -- Mitt Romney, supporting President Bush's bank bailouts.

    2009 - Conservative Mitt: "When government is… bailing out banks… we have every good reason to be alarmed."
    -- Mitt Romney, condemning the bank bailouts.

    ON BUSH TAX CUTS
    2002 - Liberal Mitt: Governor Mitt Romney refused to endorse the tax cuts at the heart of President Bush's economic program. The governor also surprised by saying he is open to a federal increase in gas taxes.

    2007 - Conservative Mitt: "It was absolutely critical to renew the Bush tax cuts. Letting them expire would result in a massive tax increase that would retard economic growth."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON CAMPAIGN REFORM:
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "I would like to have campaign spending limits."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator of Massachusetts

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "The American people should be free to advocate for their candidates and their positions without burdensome limitations."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON GLOBAL WARMING:
    2003 - Liberal Mitt: "I think the global warming debate is now pretty much over and people recognize the need associated with providing sources which do not generate the heat that is currently provided by fossil fuels. I concur that climate change is beginning to [have an] effect on our natural resources and that now is the time to take action."
    -- Mitt Romney, as Massachusetts governor..

    2007 - Conservative Mitt: "I have to tell you with regards to global warming that that’s something, which, you’re right, the scientists haven’t entirely resolved, but no question about one thing, it’s getting warmer, and a lot of good reasons for us to use less energy, to use it more efficiently and to develop sources here in this country that could allow us to be more independent of foreign sources."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON COAL:
    2004 - Liberal Mitt: "I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people, and that plant -- that plant kills people."
    -- Mitt Romney, as Massachusetts governor in front of a coal-fired power plant.

    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "I like coal."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative.

    ON FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency):
    2012 - Conservative Mitt: "We cannot afford Federal Disaster Relief. Everytime you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that's even better."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for president as a conservative.

    2012 - Liberal Mitt: "I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters. As president, I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs to fulfill its mission."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for president as a moderate, three months later.

    ON SO-CALLED "BLIND TRUST":
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "The 'blind trust' is an age-old ruse. You give a blind trust rules. You can say to a blind trust, don't invest in properties which would be in conflict of interest or where the seller might think they're going to take advantage from me."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator from Massachusetts, and commenting on Ted Kennedy's "blind trust."

    2007 - Conservative Mitt: "I did not direct any of my investments nor did I know of these investments."
    -- Mitt Romney, presidential candidate called on his "blind trust" investing in embryonic stem-cell research, as well as extensive Iranian oil and gas interests.

    ON DODGING THE VIETNAM WAR DRAFT:
    1994 - Liberal Mitt: "I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam."
    -- Mitt Romney, running for senator of Massachusetts.

    2007 - Conservative Mitt: "I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam."
    -- Mitt Romney, etch-a-sketching conservative. Romney skipped out on the Vietnam experience (or any military experience) by going off to France on a Mormon mission. Likewise, not one of Romney's five strapping sons had any interest in volunteering for any type of military service.


George W. Bush
Surely one of the most quotable presidents ever... just not quotes to be real proud of. From these utterances a fair-minded person cannot escape clearly realizing that, until Trump, this individual was the least qualified, most intellectually stunted, most linguistically challenged, and most pathetic excuse for a president the USA has ever had. While, with his extreme narcissistic personality, Trump likely would have bullied himself into some sort of con-scheme success even if had not inherited $400 million from his daddy, if George W. Bush had not been George H.W. Bush's son, this guy would have been lucky to become an assistant manager at Wal-Mart.

Conservative Myth Alert "History will prove me right. This is an exercise in folly."
-- George W. Bush, 1994. As GM of the Texas Rangers baseball club, Bush was the only baseball executive to vote against the plan to allow more teams into the playoffs each year. The change was implemented and has been enormously popular with the fans, and an unprecedented financial success for Major League Baseball. As usual, Bush -- the conservative -- was dead wrong. History will prove him right about nothing of importance.

"This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base."
-- George W. Bush. Speaking the truth for a change at a diamond-studded, $800-a-plate fundraiser.

Conservative Myth Alert "I'm a uniter, not a divider."
-- George W. Bush. 2000 Presidential campaign. Typical conservative double-speak, as his policies would divide American from American, and America from the world like no president in two generations at least.

Conservative Myth Alert "I'm a compassionate conservative."
-- George W. Bush. 2000 Presidential campaign. An interesting statement, implying (accurately) that this is quite unusual, and a departure from recent conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Bush's own father. But, alas, it proved to be 180 degrees incorrect... just like much conservative rhetoric. A case could easily be made that George W. Bush has been the least compassionate president in modern American history.

"If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us; if we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that's why we've got to be humble, and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom."
-- George W. Bush. 2000 Presidential Debate. Posterity will record, emphatically, that the Bush presidency was one of the least humble and most arrogant in American history... again, the exact opposite of what he promised as a presidential candidate. And his warnings have came true. Much of the world did despise the U.S. through the reign of Bush.


"A person's vocabulary and syntax have a high correlation with his general IQ. Considering Bush's poor vocabulary and syntax, one can postulate that his general IQ is probably at the lower end of the average range."
-- Abbas Sadeghian, neuropsychologist

"Family is where America finds hope, where wings take dream."
-- George W. Bush. And fly off to sleep?

"You know this thought took a while to thought. It's going to take a while to unthought."
-- George W. Bush, thoughting.

"There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead."
-- George W. Bush. And it only got worse after that.

"Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican."
-- George W. Bush. Refusing to answer a question in any language... certainly including Mexican.

"They misunderestimate me."
-- George W. Bush. Sorry, George there is no such word as "misunderestimate".

"I've got a record that is conservative, and a record that is compassionated."
-- George W. Bush. Uh, nope, no such word as "compassionated" either.

"I know that human being and fish can co-exist peacefully."
-- George W. Bush. So, no pre-emptive strike on salmon?

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
-- George W. Bush. But do you know how hard it is for you to make sense?

"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."
-- George W. Bush. Perhaps... but will him or her make a good President?

"Rarely is the question asked, 'is our children learning?'"
-- George W. Bush. Hopefully not from you, sir. Did you actually ever take English in school, or did Poppy get you out of that, too?

As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured."
-- George W. Bush. Hmmmm... wish someone had measured yours.

"Mathematics are one of the fundamentaries of educationalizing our youth."
-- George W. Bush. Wow, Mr. President, two completely made-up words and an incorrect verb in the same sentence... a stunning display of fundamental English language incompetence. Most fifth graders would do better.

Conservative Myth Alert "I will retire nearly $ONE Trillion in debt over the next four years. ... the largest debt reduction ever achieved by any nation at any time."
-- George W. Bush, campaign 2000. Instead, Bush ADDED over $SIX Trillion in debt... that's a SIX HUNDRED PERCENT REVERSAL of what he promised. Guess he didn't get educationalized in the fundamentaries of mathematics at Yale and Harvard.

"We expect the states to show us whether or not we're achieving simple objectives—like literacy, literacy in math, the ability to read and write."
-- George W. Bush. And it's a darned good thing you don't have to take the test, right sir?

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"
-- George W. Bush. Better check with your puppet-master, Dick Cheney.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, 'fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me' -- you can't get fooled again."
-- George W. Bush. Whew, from the mangler-in-chief. The actual old saying is: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." And shame on America for electing you twice!

"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case."
-- George W. Bush. Hello, anyone home?

"I want to thank my friend, Sen. Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me."
-- George W. Bush. Lord help us!

"America needs a military where our breast and brightest are proud to serve."
-- George W. Bush. What's really on your mind there, sir?

"Too many OB-GYNs are not able to practice their love with women all over this country."
-- George W. Bush. Hmmm, a weird trend is developing.

"This is historic times."
-- George W. Bush. Yes, they is... as is most times.

"One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end."
-- George W. Bush. Excuse me?

"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption."
-- George W. Bush. Well yeah... if there's anything Americans are slacking off on, it's consumption. Besides, anything to keep those oil prices as high as possible for you oilmen.

"I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport."
-- George W. Bush. Wait, can the ticket counters fly on their own, or do they need the airplanes?

"For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times."
-- George W. Bush. Well, heh-heh, except for that little spat in the 1940s... something about Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, Midway, Guadalcanal, Bataan, kamikazes, a nuclear bomb or two... whatever.


In his book, Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin A. Frank, a well-respected Washington, D.C.–based psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry, ponders the following characteristics of George W. Bush:
  • Bush's false sense of omnipotence, instilled within him during childhood and emboldened by his deep investment in fundamentalist religion
  • The president's history of untreated alcohol abuse, and the questions it raises about denial, impairment, and the enabling streak in our culture
  • The growing anecdotal evidence that Bush may suffer from dyslexia, ADHD, and other thought disorders
  • His comfort living outside the law, defying international law in his presidency as boldly as he once defied DUI statutes and military reporting requirements
  • His love-hate relationship with his father, and how it triggered a complex and dangerous mix of feelings including yearning, rivalry, anger, and sadism
  • Bush's rigid and simplistic thought patterns, paranoia, and megalomania -- and how they have driven him to invent adversaries so that he can destroy them

"I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president. I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
-- George W. Bush. No, that would be one of the interesting things about being king or pope. You, sir, are actually an employee of the people of the United States of America... and you do owe us explanations about everything. Anyone who would say or think such a thing really has utterly no business being president.

"I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive'".
-- George W. Bush. The sheriff-in-chief determined to snare that Osama bin Laden, the villain of 9/11

"I don't know where he is. I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.".
-- George W. Bush. Six months later, no longer so interested in justice, the flip-flopper-in-chief has turned his attention to Iraq.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. "
-- George W. Bush. Definitely doing a great job there.

"I believe God wants me to be president."
-- George W. Bush. Funny, Osama bin Laden thinks God chose him, too.

"I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right."
-- George W. Bush. Except when it's wrong... which, unfortunately, seems to be the case most often.

"One has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards."
-- George W. Bush. And your chances of winning are better. Wait a minute???

"A dictatorship would be a lot easier."
-- George W. Bush. Why not? Facism has always been popular with conservatives.

"I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will."
-- George W. Bush. If only! Instead, the U.S. military budget is almost, not quite, but almost, equal to the rest of the world's combined? No wonder billions of people around the globe consider the most dangerous nation on earth to be... the United States of America.

Conservative Myth Alert "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
-- George W. Bush. State of the Union speech, 2003... even though Bush was aware that the CIA considered this claim entirely bogus.

"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
-- George W. Bush. It's always difficult to fit a square peg into a round hole. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, yet the invasion of Iraq diverted precious resources away from the real "war on terror", and has alienated America from the rest of the world... making the real "war on terror" much more challenging.

"My answer is, 'bring them on.'"
-- George W. Bush. July, 2003. Goading the insurgents in Iraq, who promptly complied with fury.

Conservative Myth Alert "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."
-- George W. Bush. April, 2006. Bush, "the decider"... rather like Peter Pan, "the adult".

"Both men (Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld) are doing fantastic in their jobs. I'm pleased with the progress we're making. They'll be here until I leave office."
-- George W. Bush. November 2, 2006. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was fired three days later. Subsequently Bush admitted he flat-out lied to the press and American people when he uttered the statement, as he had already decided to fire Rumsfeld, and had selected a replacement.

"I would still invade Iraq even if Iraq never existed."
-- George W. Bush. Maybe that would have worked out better.

"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three—three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting?"
-- George W. Bush. Thankfully, Washington didn't have to read any books about you.

Conservative Myth Alert "And Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
-- George W. Bush. September, 2005. To FEMA director Mike Brown who resigned 10 days later amid a firestorm of anger over his incompetence. Brown, a political crony appointed FEMA director by Bush, had no previous experience in disaster management.

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
-- George W. Bush. Yep, that seems to be the exact blueprint.

Conservative Myth Alert "See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."
-- George W. Bush. This from the world's all-time champion developer of weapons of mass destruction, which invaded another nation that was not a threat (but which did have the world's second largest pool of oil).

"I think I was unprepared for war."
-- George W. Bush. You got that right.

"I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
-- George W. Bush. Well, history will eventually figure it out, meanwhile, at least you are gone.


Dick Cheney
And now a few words from the puppet-master.

"Principle is OK up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose. "
-- Dick Cheney. Yes, we've noticed that conservatives happily dispense with their principles in order to win.

"I had other priorities in the '60s than military service.""
-- Dick Cheney. Five draft deferments worth of priorities. Like George W. Bush, Cheney found a way to hide out from actually going to Vietnam, but that didn't stop them from supporting others going to die in their place... then, and now.

"Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
-- Dick Cheney. Of course, you could speed up the progress at getting at that "prize" by, you know, invading one of those countries.

"The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.... Once we had Saddam rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."
-- Dick Cheney. In 1992, supporting the president who did not want to invade Iraq.

Conservative Myth Alert "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. I think it will go relatively quickly... weeks rather than months."
-- Dick Cheney. In 2003, supporting the president who did want to invade Iraq (and go after that "prize").

"Go fuck yourself."
-- Dick Cheney. June, 2004 to Democratic Senator Pat Leahy, who had expressed dismay at the no-bid contracts Halliburton was receiving from the company's ex-CEO... Dick Cheney.

Conservative Myth Alert "We haven't really had the time yet to pore through all those records in Baghdad. We'll find ample evidence confirming the link, that is the connection if you will between al Qaida and the Iraqi intelligence services. They have worked together on a number of occasions."
-- Dick Cheney. There is no credible intelligence that the Saddam Hussein regime ever cooperated with al Qaeda. Indeed, they hated each other.

Conservative Myth Alert "We now know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.... We know he had the necessary infrastructure because we found the labs and the dual-use facilities that could be used for these chemical and biological agents. We know that he was developing the delivery systems — ballistic missiles — that had been prohibited by the United Nations."
-- Dick Cheney. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, no capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction have been discovered... precisely as the weapons inspectors inside Iraq prior to the invasion had suggested.

Conservative Myth Alert "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
-- Dick Cheney. June, 2005. The "insurgency" would continue for years.

Conservative Myth Alert "The bottom line is that we've had enormous successes (in Iraq) and we will continue to have enormous successes."
-- Dick Cheney. January, 2007. Some true-believers will take you at your word, but an avalanche of facts speaks otherwise... sir puppetmaster. History is likely to record the invasion of Iraq as the biggest military blunder in American history.

Conservative Myth Alert "As a former secretary of defense, I think Donald Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had."
-- Dick Cheney. Most unbiased observers now believe that Rumsfeld was the worst secretary of defense the United States has ever had... underscoring once again the disconnect between conservative belief and the plain fact. Shortly after this statement, Bush fired Rumsfeld.

"With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People...ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."
-- Dick Cheney. January, 2004. Referring to the homosexual relationship of his daughter Mary Cheney. But even a lesbian in the family of one of its highest member (and liberally sprinkled throughout the rest of the party) didn't stop the Republicans from using homophobia as a wedge issue in every political campaign.

Conservative Myth Alert "Everyone knows that you're not really a real man unless you own a gun."
-- Dick Cheney. April, 2002... approximately four years before he aimed a shotgun at a fellow hunter and pulled the trigger.

The Lies of Dick Cheney


Ronald Reagan
The Great Communicator... uh, maybe not.

Conservative Myth Alert "The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom."
-- Ronald Reagan. This is the official redefinition of conservativism proferred by conservatives seeking to sway low information voters. It is completely untrue, as solidly proven by both Reagan's and the Bushies' great expansion of the size of government, wild spending, consolidation of authority, and constrictions of individual rights. The original definition of conservatism remain far more true: one who seeks to conserve "traditional" hierarchies, institutions and values.

"My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes."
-- Ronald Reagan. Good thing the Soviets really were pathetically inept... lest we lose a few cities in a mushroom cloud upon their hearing of this ill-considered quip.

"It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?"
-- Ronald Reagan. Admitting the conservative politician's high regard for hard work... for everyone else that is.

Conservative Myth Alert "Facts are stupid things."
-- Ronald Reagan. A truer conservative mantra never was uttered.

"I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself."
-- Ronald Reagan, so whistled the man who was TRIPLING the national debt.

Conservative Myth Alert "Government isn't the solution to the problem; it is the problem."
-- Ronald Reagan. Certainly often true when conservatives are running the government -- as Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the Walter Reed Hospital debacles have so recently affirmed. Not so much when liberals, who actually care about the common citizen and do pay attention to those pesky "facts", are doing the problem-solving. Not only is this quotation soundly untrue, it is a ridiculously irresponsible thing for a political leader to say. It is, however, a prototypical conservative thought: do anything, including inspiring distrust and disgust amongst the citizenry toward their own government, to get elected.

Conservative Myth Alert "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles."
-- Ronald Reagan. Classic Republican disinformation based upon a nugget of truth. Trees can release hydrocarbons that contribute to photochemical smog, however, their absorption of carbon dioxide and release of oxygen more than compensates for this. Indeed, when it comes to breathable air, trees and plants are our best friends. Meanwhile, automobiles and other human sources pump billions of pounds of additional chemicals, hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide -- over and above all natural sources of such pollutants -- into the atmosphere causing unhealthful air quality, increased smog and, most ominously, a build-up of greenhouse gases that are causing the entire planet to warm.

"We are trying to get unemployment to go up, and I think we're going to succeed."
-- Ronald Reagan. And with his basic economic scheme firmly in place, he was exactly right.

Conservative Myth Alert "The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity."
-- Ronald Reagan. Yeah, schools and colleges are a real bad investment for a nation... and, of course, the intellectually curious rarely remain conservative. Besides, Reagan and Bush Jr. prove how far you can get in life without possessing any intellectually curiosity.

Conservative Myth Alert "What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice."
-- Ronald Reagan. Another of Reagan's utterly false statements. Reagan's domestic policies exponentially increased homelessness in America.

Conservative Myth Alert "She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names."
-- Ronald Reagan. Campaigning against so-called "welfare queens". Turns out, no such person ever existed, and the conservative implication that such welfare fraud was ever common, much less rampant, much less could have made much difference to the national budget anyway, was absolutely false. Rather this was yet another conservative ploy to stir up class and racial biases to bring out their voters.


"We've already named a major airport and schools and streets after Ronald Reagan. But perhaps a more fitting tribute to his legacy would be for each American city to name a park bench - where at least one homeless person sleeps every night - in honor of our 40th president."
-- Peter Dreier, director of the urban and environmental policy program at Occidental College and co-author of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century.

"What does an actor know about politics?"
-- Ronald Reagan. Criticizing Ed Asner for opposing American foreign policy.

"Please tell me you're all Republicans."
-- Ronald Reagan. On admittance to the surgical theater after the assassination attempt that left him with bullet hole in his side. Ha-ha. But wouldn't you know, the lead surgeon, Joseph Giordano, was a liberal Democrat, who graciously replied, "We're all Republicans today." Reagan fully recovered, and the brilliant surgeon who saved the conservative president resumed being a liberal.

Conservative Myth Alert "In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off."
-- Ronald Reagan. And now that Libya is no longer communist, does that mean that Amageddon has been called off?

"Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost... We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate... "
-- Ronald Reagan. Hmmm... Reagan the Liberal? Sure seems like it compared to these conservative wing-nuts today.

"Well, I learned a lot….I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries."
-- Ronald Reagan. Yes, very surprising! Hopefully you stopped by Nicaragua and Guatemala and El Salvador to say hello to your buddies running guns to the Contras and drugs to America.


George H. W. Bush
Far more experienced, and far wiser than his son, yes, but not quite as quotable.

Conservative Myth Alert "I'm the one who will not raise taxes. My opponent now says he'll raise them as a last resort, or a third resort. But when a politician talks like that, you know that's one resort he'll be checking into. My opponent won't rule out raising taxes. But I will. And The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, ‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’"
-- George H.W. Bush. During the 1988 presidential campaign. As president Bush Sr. would sign the largest tax increase in American history at the time.

"It's voodoo economics."
-- George H.W. Bush. During the 1980 presidential primaries, referring to Ronald Reagan's "supply-side" economic plan. He was correct. Reagan's tax cuts for the wealthy and out-of-control military spending ran up a record deficit.

"I will never apologize for the United States, ever. I don't care what the facts are."
-- George H.W. Bush. After a U.S. warship shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, kiling 290 civilians. There you have it. True stubborn conservative resolve to put misguided, jingoistic patriotism over and above truth, honor and the ability to learn and grow from our mistakes. Is it any wonder that Bush Jr. and his compadres cannot ever admit mistakes, and that we are now sunk in the morass of Iraq when the conservatives learned absolutely nothing from Vietnam?

"Extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."
-- George H.W. Bush. Explaining why his administration refused to go after Saddam Hussein following the Gulf War, and displaying rare clarity of thought, and even clairvoyance.

"We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a 'new world order'. A world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this 'new world order', an order in which a credible United Nations can use it's peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.s' founders."
-- George H.W. Bush. Nice try. These sweet-sounding words camouflage conservative hatred of the United Nations (because it insists on the United States actually becoming just one of the "united" nations, not the bully-boy on the world block that conservatives want it to forever be), and ring completely hollow since Georgie Junior's utter disdain and disregard of international law, systematic attempt to marginalize the U.N., and implementation of the "Bush Doctrine" (might-makes-right, pre-emptive strike) which was derived direct from the jungle.

"I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the identity of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."
-- George H.W. Bush. Ooops... spoken four years before his son, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and Karl Rove intentionally betrayed the trust and exposed the identity of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame.

"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them."
-- George H.W. Bush. On that we can agree.

"I'm conservative, but I'm not a nut about it."
-- George H.W. Bush. That's probably why you were not re-elected. It's the conservative nut-jobs that have the staying power.

"I put confidence in the American people, in their ability to sort through what is fair and what is unfair, what is ugly and what is unugly."
-- George H.W. Bush. Guess making up words runs in the family.

Conservative Myth Alert "I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
-- George H.W. Bush. Conservatives just really don't believe in freedom of religion, or freedom from religion, as explicitly proscribed by the Founding Fathers. Of course, they were liberals.


Richard Nixon
Just a lovely, lovely man... and delightful president.

Conservative Myth Alert "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal."
-- Richard Nixon. Making up the rules as he went along. Like the truth, the law has always bugged conservatives. Reagan and George W. Bush picked up where Nixon left off.

"When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that can't happen."
-- Richard Nixon. As a boy, explaining his dismay regarding the infamous Teapot Dome scandal of conservative president Warren G. Harding's administration. Yep, conservatives have always been the progenitors of the most harmful scandals, and Nixon, himself would concoct one of the biggest of all.

"This administration has proved that it is utterly incapable of cleaning out the corruption which has completely eroded it and reestablishing the confidence and faith of the American people in the morality and honesty of their government employees."
-- Richard Nixon. As a senator, attacking the Truman administration. Though the words "morality" and "honesty" are regularly wielded by conservatives, and rarely apply to any politician, they apply least of all to conservatives ... as Nixon, Reagan and Bush would decisively prove.

"I would have made a good pope."
-- Richard Nixon. Well, maybe. But it's a good thing to be Catholic first.

"This [politics] would be a helluva good business if it wasn't for the goddamned people."
-- Richard Nixon. Far better to be pope or king or dictator (as in George W. Bush's dream). Notice how conservative minds think alike... in their disdain for that little thing in America we call "democracy".

"Publicly, we say one thing....Actually, we do another."
-- Richard Nixon. Thank you for admitting it so clearly.

"The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line."
-- Richard Nixon. The conservatives have such a gift for painting entire races, entire countries, entire religions with their black-and-white brush.

Conservative Myth Alert "You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana are Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."
-- Richard Nixon. Our president, clearly channeling some sort of alternate conservative reality.

Conservative Myth Alert "The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards."
-- Richard Nixon. Certainly unlike you, sir, a pillar of moral behavior... or not.

"Now here's the point, Bob. Please get the names of the Jews. You know, the big Jewish contributors to the Democrats. Could you please investigate some of the cocksuckers? That's all."
-- Richard Nixon. Oy!

"I have the greatest affection for African-Americans, but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."
-- Richard Nixon. Pithy but accurate insight into what conservatives think about, oh, approximately half of the American population.

"I'm not for women, frankly, in any job. I don't want any of them around. Thank God we don't have any in the Cabinet."
-- Richard Nixon. American females... if you vote conservative, you just really don't have a clue, do you?

"Look, people get drunk ... People chase girls. And the point is, it's a hell of a lot better for them to get drunk than to take drugs. It's better to chase girls than boys. "
-- Richard Nixon. Defending an American ambassador's groping of a female flight attendant.

"I don't mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Nevertheless, goddamn, I don't think you glorify it on public television, homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates."
-- Richard Nixon. So let's get this straight, sir, we should glorify whores more than homosexuals?

"That asshole."
-- Richard Nixon. His term for Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. To which Trudeau replied, "I've been called worse things by better people."

"I want to make sure he's a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do as he is told, that every income tax return I want to see, I see. That he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends."
-- Richard Nixon. Considering who he would appoint to head the Internal Revenue Service. And you thought George W. Bush trying to manipulate U.S. attorneys into prosecuting Democrats while stonewalling Republican crimes was original?

"I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry? The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?...I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes... You're so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don't give a damn. I don't care."
-- Richard Nixon. Debating with Henry Kissinger about using a nuclear bomb on North Vietnam.

"I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it'll save it, save this plan. That's the whole point. We're going to protect our people if we can."
-- Richard Nixon. As the Watergate investigations began heating up.

"And I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States."
-- Richard Nixon. He walked away from the job seven months later.

"Maybe New York shouldn't survive. Maybe it should go through a cycle of destruction."
-- Richard Nixon. An early thought by the conservatives, later picked up by the neocons, on how nicely a "Pearl Harbor style" attack would serve their amibitions to rule America.

Hunter S. Thompson eulogizes Richard M. Nixon


Barry Goldwater
A staunch Cold Warrior, free-marketeer and believer in the mythical "small" government... but also a pure-hearted defender of democracy and liberty. A conservative who at least made perfect sense half the time.

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism."
-- Barry Goldwater. A beautiful repudiation of the practices and policies of Nixon, Reagan and Bush.

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."
-- Barry Goldwater. Take that, those that would shut off dissent over George W. Bush's disastrous regime.

"To disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable."
-- Barry Goldwater. Tell that to Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, Republican grand wizards of the politics of personal destruction.

"Today’s so-called ‘conservatives’ don’t even know what the word means. They think I’ve turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders of the Religious Right. It’s not a conservative issue at all."
-- Barry Goldwater.

"While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment."
-- Barry Goldwater.


"Imagine a senator running for president whose positions included halving the military budget, socializing the medical system, re-regulating the communications and electrical industries, establishing a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans, and equalizing funding for all schools regardless of property valuations — and who promised to fire Alan Greenspan, counseled withdrawal from the World Trade Organization, and, for good measure, spoke warmly of adolescent sexual experimentation. That was Barry Goldwater, conservative."
-- Rick Perlstein

"I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'"
-- Barry Goldwater. Ever wonder why you rarely hear Barry Goldwater quoted by conservatives?

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
-- Barry Goldwater.

"Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy."
-- Barry Goldwater

"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."
-- Barry Goldwater. OK. And the corollary would have to be, 'a conservative is someone too narrowminded to see any other side'.

"If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government."
-- Barry Goldwater. But that doesn't stop hypocritical conservatives from trying, eh Newt?

"The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they're gay. You don't have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay."
-- Barry Goldwater. Ever wonder why you rarely hear Barry Goldwater quoted by conservatives?

"You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight."
-- Barry Goldwater. A one-of-a-kind conservative, for sure.



More Choice Quips From Great Conservative Thinkers Past & Present

Spiro Agnew | Sharron Angle | Lee Atwater | Michele Bachmann | Bruce Bartlett | Joe Barton | Andre Bauer
Glenn Beck | Stephen Broden | David Brooks | William F. Buckley Jr. | Barbara Bush
Herman Cain | William Casey | Calvin Coolidge | Ann Coulter | Tom Delay | Jerry Falwell
Gerald Ford | Fox News | Newt Gingrich | Alberto Gonzalez | John Hagee | Herbert Hoover
Steve King | William Kristol | Rush Limbaugh | Lawrence Lockman | John McCain | Grover Norquist
Gary North | Christine O'Donnell | Bill O'Reilly | Sarah Palin | Kathleen Parker | Rick Perry
Judge Richard Posner | Colin Powell | Dan Quayle | Pat Robertson | Ann Romney
Theodore Roosevelt | Karl Rove | Donald Rumsfeld | Rick Santorum | Arnold Schwarzenegger
Lamar Smith | Richard Spencer | Randall Terry | Strom Thurmond | George Wallace | James Watt | Paul Wolfowitz


Spiro Agnew
"if you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all."
-- Spiro Agnew, vice-president under Republican president Richard Nixon, revealing typical conservative unconcern with poor people and inner city issues.


Sharron Angle
"I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out"
-- Sharron Angle, Republican senate candidate. The Second Amendment, in case you have forgotten, involves guns. Here, depending on your interpretation, she is either an inch removed from actual treason, or she's already across the line.


Lee Atwater
"I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."
-- Lee Atwater. Republican political operative and campaign director for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who pioneered excessively dirty campaign tricks. He expressed regret about many of those tactics shortly before he died of a brain tumor. Karl Rove is considered Atwater's "hatchet-man" successor and continuing dirty tricks innovator.


Michele Bachmann
"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."
-- Michele Bachmann, displaying her utter ignorance of how Global Warming actually works.

"The very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more."
-- Michele Bachmann, displaying her utter ignorance of the founding fathers and the institution of slavery.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design."
-- Michele Bachmann, making up stuff again. OK, Michele, start naming them. Hundreds and hundreds, remember... not just a handful of outliers.

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence."
-- Michele Bachmann, wasting no opportunity, no matter how classless, to perceive pure evil in the Democrats.

What a bizarre time we're in, when a judge will say to little children that you can't say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it."
-- Michele Bachmann, wildly pontificating on two issues she obviously knows nothing about, and throwing in a completely false accusation of judges for good measure..

"If we took away the minimum wage - if conceivably it was gone - we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."
-- Michele Bachmann, revealing her desire to transform America into a Third World country.

"I find it interesting that it was back in 1970 that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence."
-- Michele Bachmann, the real witch (not Christine O'Donnell) of the Republican Party, just throwing an idea out there, a cruel and toxic and hateful idea, just to see what gullible conservative people might believe, without respect to the idea's actual truthfulness... which was approximately zero (as so often with Bachmann, who has been dubbed the lyingest politician in America... and that's saying something as most conservatives are pretty fair liars in each of their own rights). Turns out (with the minimum possible research effort) the swine flu Bachmann is referring to was in in 1976, not 1970, and the president when it started up was Republican Gerald Ford, not Democrat Jimmy Carter.

"I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt]."
-- Michele Bachmann, one wing-nut handing off to another.

"What I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa... that’s the kind of spirit that I have, too."
-- Michele Bachmann, comparing her "spirit" to that of mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, from Waterloo, Iowa. Wait! Did she really mean the American movie star icon John Wayne, born in Winterset, Iowa? Simple mistake, folks. Any conservative could make it.

"What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward."
-- Michele Bachmann, demonstrating her acumen for geo-politics circa 1957, alas, not so accurate for 2012.

"Lady Liberty and Sarah Palin are lit by the same torch."
-- Michele Bachmann, comparing the Sarah Palin to the Statue of Liberty. How touching. Or should we say "touched?"

"I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I’m not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I’m not a scientist."
-- Michele Bachmann, admitting that she is not a deep thinker, not knowledgeable, not a scientist. just your run-of-the-mill faith-based idiot, that's all. Oh, and elected representative of the State of Minnesota.

"This nation has gotten away from the principles of the founding fathers under the failed leadership of Barack Obama. This country could use a president like Benjamin Franklin again."
-- Michele Bachmann, Where to start? Does she have any idea, at all, who Benjamin Franklin was? He was never the president, but he was one of the most liberal of the founding fathers.


Bruce Bartlett
"Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do."
-- Bruce Bartlett, conservative economist, senior policy analyst under Ronald Reagan, and Treasury Department official under George. H.W. Bush

"I'm serious. This is the way they (neoconservatives) think. And this drives a lot of these policies that on the surface don't make any sense. They're just about taking away the government's resources to force it to shrink to -- if you cut the budgets of the regulatory agencies, then they can't regulate. This is a good thing. They really believe that there's absolutely nothing good that comes out of government, unless it comes out of the Pentagon."
-- Bruce Bartlett

"Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today. As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, it's just nonsense. It's just made up."
-- Bruce Bartlett

"People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them."
-- Bruce Bartlett

"I'm not sure if they (social conservatives) really know very much about taxation. Back when the Tea Party first came into existence, back in 2009 they had a big demonstration in Washington. And we went around and we surveyed a good percentage of the people in this demonstration about what they knew about taxes, what they thought the top rate was, what they thought their tax rate was. You know, questions of just straight factual knowledge, not opinion. And it turned out that these people all thought taxes were vastly higher than they really are, and that they were paying exorbitantly high tax rates that would be impossible for them to pay. And so, I think that this is part of what's going on here, is simple misinformation. it's very much like religion. And I think that it's not a surprise that so many very, you know, devout Christians are a part of the Republican Party and accept a lot of this. Because the nature of deep religious belief is faith, which means you accept things for which there is no proof. And so, I think it's not that hard to shift that faith over to believe a lot other things that you've been told are true so many times that you just accept that on faith as well. That if you cut taxes, revenues will go up, you know, and things of this sort. That all tax cuts are good and all spending cuts are good, and all government is bad. And they don't seem to care that they don't know as much about public policy or just the basic facts of, you know, how much does the government tax, how much does the government spend? What does the government spend money on? I've seen more than one poll that shows people believe that 20 percent of government spending goes to foreign aid. 20 percent! It's actually one percent."
-- Bruce Bartlett

"The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to -- to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government."
-- Bruce Bartlett

"The conservative side of our political spectrum has had an outsized voice over the last few years. I think especially since the establishment of Fox News, which has created an echo chamber in which people just hear the same ideas repeated ad infinitum. And you know, it's just basic advertising, basically. You hear the same idea over and over again. Or you can call it propaganda if you like."
-- Bruce Bartlett

"It's obvious that a lot of Tea Party members tend to be elderly. You've seen that famous sign, 'Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare.' And I think as long as the government does keep its hands off their Medicare, they're fine with talking about low taxes. But once they start to realize that the Republicans really do want to not just cut Medicare, but essentially abolish it, you know, I just think those people are not going to be part of the Tea Party. They're going to be over with Occupy Wall Street."
-- Bruce Bartlett


Joe Barton
"Wind is a finite resource and harnassing it would slow down the winds which would cause the temperature to go up."
-- Joe Barton, Republican congressman from Texas, explaining how little he knows about reality. And get this... he's the chairman of the House-Senate Energy Conference Committee!


Andrew Bauer
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better."
-- Andrew Bauer, Republican South Carolina lieutenant governor, arguing to deny state food assistance for poor residents.


Glenn Beck
"When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I’m just like, ‘Oh shut up’ I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining."
-- Glenn Beck


Stephen Broden
"Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms."
-- Stephen Broden, Texas Republican/Tea Party congressional candidate and yet another conservative unbeliever in actual democracy, suggesting armed revolution if Republicans can't win at the ballot box (and running very close - perhaps over - the line of treason).


David Brooks
"It's not honorable to adjust your true nature in order to win re-election. It's not honorable to kowtow to extremes so you can preserve your political career... but, of course, that is exactly what has been happening in the Republican Party for the past half century. Over these decades, one pattern has been constant: Wingers fight to take over the party, mainstream Republicans bob and weave to keep their seats. Republicans on the extreme ferociously attack their fellow party members... Those in the mainstream are quick to fudge their principles if it will help them get a short-term win... the protesters don't believe in governance. They have zero tolerance for the compromises to get legislation passed. They don't believe in trimming and coalition building. Of course, the professional politicians don't want to get in the way of this passion and resentment. All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lameting how the party has grown more and more insulare, more and more rigid.... the wingers have trashed the party's reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Michel Bachmann, Donald Trump, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum. Where have the party leaders been when all the forces that distort the GOP were metastasizing? Where were they during the rise of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck? Where were they when Arizona passed its beyond-the-fringe immigration law? Where were they in the summer of 2011 when the House Republicans rejected even the possibility of budget compromise? They're Opossum Republicans. They tremble for a few seconds then slip into an involuntary coma every time they're challenged aggressively from the right. Without real opposition, the wingers go from strength to strength. Under their influence we've had a primary campaign that isn't really an argument about issues. It's a a series of heresy trials in which each of the candidates accuse the others of tribal impurity."
-- David Brooks, conservative columnist, providing an excellent summation of the current drift of conservatism. Feeling threatened, angry and fearful, the social conservatives have congealed around an incoherent and extreme ideology of "passion and resentment" that the corporate conservatives, though very wary of this movement getting out of control, are only too happy to along with. After all, "winger" angst demonizes liberals and a liberal-leaning government, which, of course, the CorpCons despise also. This dynamic duo - SoCon and CorpCon - then easily brushes aside moderates and pragmatists such as Brooks


William F. Buckley disses the Beatles... revealing how wrong conservative thinking truly is.

William F. Buckley Jr.
Conservative Myth Alert "The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic."
-- William F. Buckley Jr. This statement is a crystal clear window into the depth and accuracy of conservative understanding of the world around them. Here we have one of the crown princes of modern American conservatism, in absolutely priceless conservative form: pontificating haughtily, obtusely, presuming to thoroughly understand a subject that in actuality he had not the thinnest microstrand of a clue about. In this matter, as in so many others, he was as wrong as wrong can possibly be. But let's parse this for deep insight into the mind of a conservative. As a conservative Buckley was ideologically programmed to despise the Beatles. They were new, they were fresh, they were different, they defied convention, they flaunted the establishment and threatened the status-quo, they were working class lads, they were cheeky, they were revolutionary, they were exceedingly talented, indeed, brilliant. And they were young and appealed to the young. The world loved them, then and today. Conservatives, throughout history, have been petrified of such phenomena... yet, as in the case of the Beatles, are generally helpless to stop it despite their control of wealth and power. Buckley, the harpsichord player (an anachronistic instrument, ironically brought back, briefly, into popular music by none other than the Beatles) and staunch classical music afficianado, was, like most conservatives, stunningly ignorant regarding the elements of real art... not to mention the concept of fun, except as narrowly defined by conservatives like himself.

"Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it."
-- William F. Buckley Jr. admitting the age-old and never-dying conservative antagonism toward science, truth and those who would deliver it. Not much has changed since the days of Galileo and Copernicus.

"I've always believed that conservatism is the politics of reality, and that reality ultimately asserts itself in a reasonably free society, in behalf of the conservative position."
-- William F. Buckley Jr. Nice try, Bill, but your believing doesn't make it true. In reality, reality has been very cruel to conservatism. The very core of conservatism - to conserve - is flattened time and again by liberal change. That's because liberality is more in sync with the most basic tenet of universal order: change is the only constant. If the "constant" you champion is not change itself, then you are going to severely challenged by the entire universe. The only reason that conservatives can believe in a world that supports conservatism is because they can't bring themselves to examine reality itself.

"Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square."
-- William F. Buckley Jr., faithful Catholic, acknowledging the general conservative disbelief in true religious freedom in America.

"The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry."
-- William F. Buckley Jr. (except when it's a conservative usurpatory government such as that of George W. Bush... then an "assertive citizenry" is just a rabble of terrorist sympathizers).

"Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."
-- William F. Buckley Jr., displaying real conservative pragmatic understanding and compassion... kind of like the way the Nazis handled the Jews.

Conservative Myth Alert “Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.”
-- William F. Buckley Jr. Actually, no. Insisting on using a word like "collectivize" suggests some sinister Communist plot, rather it might be explained that the liberal perspective is to always do right for the "collective good", in rich times as in poor, whereas conservative leaders philsophically and methodically disdain the collective good at all times in favoring the good of the individual rich, white male.

“A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling "Stop!"”
-- William F. Buckley Jr. Precisely! Conservative ideology in a nutshell! Stop the progress! Stop the progress! Conserve the hierarchy! Protect the aristocracy! Defend the status-quo! Ask no questions! Seek no answers! Believe what you are told by your superiors! Fortunately, after a while, history always casts aside the conservative point-of-view, and moves ahead. They come along, kicking and screaming.

“Some of my instincts are reprehensible.”
-- William F. Buckley Jr. (And most of his ideas).

"Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes."
-- William F. Buckley Jr., late in life, following the death of his wife from smoking-related illness (and mindful, as well, of his own emphysema), repudiating the conservative "free market" mantra in favor of that liberal concept of "collective good."

“Marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”
William F. Buckley Jr. Well, even a broken clock is correct twice a day.


Barbara Bush
"One thing I can say about George... he may not be able to keep a job, but he's not boring."
-- Barbara Bush. Speaking of her son, George W. Bush, prior to his political campaigns.

Conservative Myth Alert "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) - this is working very well for them."
-- Barbara Bush. Speaking about Hurricane Katrina refugees being given temporary shelter in the Houston Astrodome.

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
-- Barbara Bush, speaking about the prospect of American dead in the Iraq War. Yes, Barbara, you have a beautiful, beautiful, mind. Keep it clean and empty. Do not clutter it, or trouble it, or despoil it by thinking of something profound, such as the death your son's misguided, evil and greedy policy wreaked.

"We've had enough Bushes."
-- Barbara Bush. Speaking of the prospect of yet another Bush running for president. Amen!


Herman Cain
"I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?"
-- Herman Cain, 2012 Republican presidential candidate, showing himself to be eminently un-presidential.

"If you're not rich, blame yourself!"
-- Herman Cain, telling all those Americans who are not rich that they didn't work hard enough and basically suck.


William Casey
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
-- William Casey, Ronald Reagan's CIA Director.


Calvin Coolidge
One smart cookie and basically a good man, Coolidge was a study in seeming contraditions. Veering at times toward outright Marxism, Coolidge nevertheless was a died-in-the-wool tax-cutter and let-business-have-its-way kind of guy. As America had never before experienced such rapid industrialization, he can be somewhat excused for not completely understanding how his economic policies would eventually harm the middle class he wanted to protect. The "trickle-down" theory of Calvin Coolidge did not work. It never does.

"I feel I no longer fit in these times."
-- Calvin Coolidge. The conservative's lament... forever getting left behind by progress.

Conservative Myth Alert "There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law."
-- Calvin Coolidge. This kind of garbage passed as conservative gospel for hundreds of years.

Conservative Myth Alert "History reveals no civilized people among whom there was not a highly educated class and large aggregations of wealth. Large profits mean large payrolls."
-- Calvin Coolidge. It's the same old conservative argument. Let's continue to help the rich get richer! What they fail to note is that large aggregations of wealth and large profits do not necessarily equate to decent wages or the flimsiest financial security for the average family. Coolidge's version of "trickle-down" (just like Reagan's and Bush's) was no boon to the working class.

Conservative Myth Alert "The man who builds a factory builds a temple, that the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise."
-- Calvin Coolidge. And the CEO's should be regarded as Gods... or at least high priests.

Conservative Myth Alert "Four-fifths of our problems would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still."
-- Calvin Coolidge. Hmmm... a Republican Buddhist? No, a conservative who did not want to encourage progress, or Heavens to Betsy interfere in any way with Big Business. Shortly after he left office the stock market crashed.

Conservative Myth Alert "The business of America is business."
-- Calvin Coolidge. So Big Business would have us believe. The founding fathers, on the other hand, and most liberals would suggest that the business of America is "the pursuit of happiness" (OK, which for the ultra rich is business).

Conservative Myth Alert “Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong”
-- Calvin Coolidge. And so... under this guise, conservatives shrink from ever restraining the strong in the slightest, and have generally never cared much about helping the weak at all. Liberals are far more "Christian" in their approach, caring for the weak (meaning poor, infirm, old... a condition in which many of us will eventually find ourselves), while supporting the strong insofar as is reasonable for the common good.

Conservative Myth Alert "The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes."
-- Calvin Coolidge. Holy Toledo! No wonder the Republicans hardly ever quote Coolidge (even though he was actually a font of homespun wisdom). Here he sounds like like Karl Marx's brother. But hey, it's not a bad idea.


Ann Coulter
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."
-- Ann Coulter. Referring to unnamed Islamic countries following the 9/11 attacks, and urging the same nuanced "Christian" strategy which worked ever so well during the Crusades.

Conservative Myth Alert "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's deaths so much."
-- Ann Coulter. Describing 9/11 widows critical of the Bush administration.

Conservative Myth Alert "God says, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'"
-- Ann Coulter. It's in the Bible, look it up. No, not that Bible, silly... the Industrial Polluters Bible.

Conservative Myth Alert "I think our party and particularly our movement, the conservative movement, does have more of a problem with con men and charlatans than the Democratic Party. I mean, the incentives seem to be set up to allow people — as long as you have a band of a few million fanatical followers, you can make money. The Democrats have managed to figure out how not to do that."
-- Ann Coulter. Well, Ann, you see there's an easy reason why that only happens with conservatives. Liberals are more knowledgeable, more fact-based, less likely to be duped by disinformation, and so much harder to fool by those con men and charlatans, um, including you. Ann, you do realize... you are talking about yourself here, don't you?

"We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals."
-- Ann Coulter, another rock solid Republican pro-lifer.

"If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president."
-- Ann Coulter, proof positive that not all women are in favor of women.

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
-- Ann Coulter, displaying the soul of the despicable.

"I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester. I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on others."
-- Ann Coulter, callously commenting on the murder (by a conservative, of course) of Doctor George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas. Tiller was gunned down in church. Nice, conservatives. This after Tiller had previously survived being shot by yet another conservative terrorist.

"If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
-- Ann Coulter, and again, if you missed the gist of the previous enchantment with violence and death for the opposition.

"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say."
-- Ann Coulter, describing her perfect world where everyone is Christian.

"I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo."
-- Ann Coulter, displaying a remarkably poor cognizance of actual American values.

"Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil."
-- Ann Coulter, attempting to defend and justify the indefensible and unjustifiable. In other words, giving cover to the Bush/Cheney Administration foreign policy.

"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do."
-- Ann Coulter, providing a predictably topsy-turvy conservative worldview. Her mistake, like all conservaives, is that they don't really understand what America is. They think America is conservative, fundamentalist Christian, and, most importantly, a land where white, wealthy men rule. She seems to have forgotten, or never learned, that conservatives have been the PROVEN traitors of this country's history. Conservatives have opposed the very concept of America since before the Revolutionary War, and they are still trying to undermine its very reason for being. In reality conservatism is anti-American, anti-democratic, and anti-Christian (in its real sense). It is conservatives who are the haters: indulge in despising and actively attempting to subjugate everyone and every thing outside their in-group. Liberals swear allegiance not to conservative myths and hierarchy, but actual American ideals: liberty, equality, justice for all, the general welfare, pursuit of happiness, as well as true Christian ideals such as love and compassion. Let these quotes serve as a primer on the high quality of conservative "values."

"The swing voters -- I like to refer to them as the idiot voters because they don't have set philosophical principles. You're either a liberal or you're a conservative if you have an IQ above a toaster."
-- Ann Coulter, spouting something we can actually agree upon. We share her suspicion of "swing voters" (i.e. "centrists," "middle of the road" voters, "independent" voters) who so often seem to have an extremely wobbly sense of values, easily flitting to one side or the other depending on how the political winds are blowing, or who had their attention last. For that reason we call that group the "squishy middle."


Tom Delay
Conservative Myth Alert "I am the Federal Government."
-- Tom Delay. Reprimanding a waitress who informed him the federal government prohibited smoking in a Washington D.C. restaurant.

Conservative Myth Alert "So many minority youths had volunteered...that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself."
-- Tom Delay. Explaining his successful avoidance of serving in the military during the Vietnam War. In truth, he had student deferments, and there is no evidence he ever attempted to volunteer.

Conservative Myth Alert "Our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud, by teaching evolution as fact."
-- Tom Delay. Blaming the teaching of evolution as the underlying cause of the Columbine high school shootings.

Conservative Myth Alert "It's never been proven that air toxins are hazardous to people."
-- Tom Delay. A flat-out lie by the former pest-exterminator who wanted to bring back DDT to the American landscape.

Conservative Myth Alert "The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills."
-- Tom Delay. And this wack job was once the top dog of the Republican congressional delegation!

Conservative Myth Alert "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."
-- Tom Delay. Another outrageous outright conservative fabrication. When the facts don't match their ideology, they simply make up their own facts. Taxes were raised in virtually all other American wars. Traditionally, sacrifices are required of all the American people. Not the Iraq war, which makes one wonder just how serious are the men behind this "war on terror" that they have pursued so incoherently, all the while continuously pushing through more tax cuts that are primarily designed to make the rich richer.

Conservative Myth Alert "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"
-- Tom Delay. To Hurricane Katrina refugees huddled in the Houston Astrodome.


Jerry Falwell
(Noted Evangelical Christian Pastor. and founder of the Moral Majority and Liberty University)
Conservative Myth Alert "Good Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions."
-- Jerry Falwell, a pastor who really wants his flock to be sheep.

"AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."
-- Jerry Falwell, holier than thou.

"The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews."
-- Jerry Falwell, displaying an astounding, fundamental misunderstanding of the Nazis, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), Jews and Christians in one short sentence! An all-time classic.


Gerald Ford
"I hope never to see the day that I cannot admit having made a mistake."
-- Gerald Ford. Expressing a humbleness that George W. Bush alluded to in the 2000 presidential campaign, but has never come close to delivering.

"America now is stumbling through the darkness of hatred and divisiveness. Our values, our principles, and our determination to succeed as a free and democratic people will give us a torch to light the way. And we will survive and become the stronger — not only because of a patriotism that stands for love of country, but a patriotism that stands for love of people."
-- Gerald Ford. Yet it is conservatives who fuel and exploit hatred and divisiveness... and who most practice blind patriotism to their ideology, not to their country and its declared principles, and not to any people who do not look and think like them.


Fox News Channel
Conservative Myth Alert "Fair and balanced."
-- Fox News Channel. The conservative political and philosophical tactic in a nutshell: The Big Lie. The Big Fear Factor. Actually, Fox News is the least fair and balanced television "news" network in American history. It is owned by an ideological zealot, Rupert Murdoch, and managed by an ideological zealot, Roger Ailes. See how this works, folks? In conservative-speak, down is up, wrong is right.


Newt Gingrich
"She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer."
-- Newt Gingrich, explaining to a friend why he was divorcing his first wife.


Alberto Gonzalez
"President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale."
-- Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General under George W. Bush (surely the least qualified and most partisan AG in American history), shows off customary conservative discombobulation.


John Hagee
(Noted Evangelical Christian Pastor)
Conservative Myth Alert "All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that."
-- John Hagee, notable Evangelical Christian pastor, on Hurricane Katrina.

Conservative Myth Alert "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist."
-- John Hagee. On women, in general.

Conservative Myth Alert "It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day."
-- John Hagee. On Jews, in general.

Conservative Myth Alert "Those who live by the Qur'an have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews... it teaches that very clearly." -- John Hagee. On Muslims, in general, not having a clue what he is talking about (standard conservative operating procedure).


Herbert Hoover
"I’m the only person of distinction who’s ever had a depression named for him. "
-- Herbert Hoover, Republican president. And the blame usually doesn't fall far from where it belongs.


Steve King
Republican U.S. Representative, Iowa)
"We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies."
-- Steve King, admitting his white supremacy, drawing praise from former KKK leader, David Duke, and the neo-Nazi webiste The Daily Stormer.


William Kristol
(Noted NeoConservative)
"Among conservatives there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people'... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons... We are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants."
-- William Kristol

Conservative Myth Alert "Whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children I tend to think it's a good idea."
-- William Kristol


Rush Limbaugh
"Too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river."
-- Rush Limbaugh. Except, of course, himself. Like all conservative honchos, Limbaugh, a confessed drug-abuser, sets a completely different standard for himself.

Conservative Myth Alert "I mean, why didn't these morons leave New Orleans before the hurricane? I'll tell you why: because they wanted to rape and loot! That's just the way some people are! And if they're black--if the rapists and looters are black--it's not George Bush's fault! We've had these problems ever since the Emancipation Proclamation."
-- Rush Limbaugh. Damn Lincoln... that Republican traitor.

Conservative Myth Alert "I'm going to tell you, what's good for al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today."
-- Rush Limbaugh. He's got it exactly backwards, as usual. Let's see: Republican leaders squandered the worldwide support and empathy for the U.S. after 9/11, bungled the possible capture of bin Laden at Tora Bora, took the pressure off al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan by diverting the "war on terror" to Iraq where there were no terrorists, caved to al Qaeda demands to remove U.S. military bases from Saudi Arabia, alienated the world with their unparalleled arrogance, enflamed and energized radical Islam worldwide, flushed billions of dollars of American taxpayers' money down the Iraq rathole, have worn out our military and sent over 3,000 American soldiers to be picked off by insurgents... Holy Jihad, George W. Bush and the Republicans have been al Qaeda's wet dream!

Conservative Myth Alert "We're not sexists, we're chauvinists -- we're male chauvinist pigs, and we're happy to be because we think that's what men were destined to be. We think that's what women want."
-- Rush Limbaugh. That Limbaugh... a conservative man's man.

Conservative Myth Alert "I don't care if they're Republican liberals or Democrat liberals, they're still liberals. They're not 'moderates.' Don't hit me with that. There's no such thing as a moderate. A moderate is just a liberal disguise."
-- Rush Limbaugh. Modern Conservatism: no moderates need apply.

"The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them."
-- Rush Limbaugh. Good thinking, Rush.

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."
-- Rush Limbaugh. Yes, back to being barefoot and pregnant woman!


Lawrence Lockman (Republican lawmaker, Maine)
"If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death."
-- Another conservative displaying complete disdain for the female half of our species.


John McCain
"We have a lot of work to do. It’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border."
-- John McCain, Republican Arizona senator, and 2008 Republican presidential nominee. Alas, Senator McCain, there is no Iraq-Pakistan border. The countries do not touch each other.

"We're the party of 'Hell No!'"
-- John McCain, correctly explaining the Republican stance on helping average Americans. Of course, when it comes to weapons programs and military misadventures and sending someone else's children to fight and die they become the party of "Hell Yes!"


Grover Norquist
"We’re not auditioning for someone to tell us what to do,” he declared. “We know what to do. We just need a president who can sign the legislation that the Republican House and Senate pass. … We don’t need someone to think. … We need someone who knows how to hold a pen."
-- Grover Norquist, CorpCon big-wig, the guy behind the "anti-tax pledges".


Gary North
"The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise (government). Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant -- baptism and holy communion -- must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel."
-- Gary North, Christian-Right leader. Yeah, that worked out well for ancient Israel.


Christine O'Donnell
"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains."
-- Christine O'Donnell, 2010 Republican Senate Candidate, Delaware.

"I’m not a witch. I’m you."
-- Christine O'Donnell. Sometimes a very forgettable person will say an unforgettable thing. How do conservatives get themselves into these quandaries?

"It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be abstinent when alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery, so you can’t masturbate without lust."
-- Christine O'Donnell. And exactly which law will you propose to the Senate to enforce this concept?

"You know what, evolution is a myth. Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans."
-- Christine O'Donnell. Guess she skipped middle school biology.


Bill O'Reilly
Conservative Myth Alert "I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made -- along with a lot of other smart people -- a fundamental mistake. The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses in widespread bankruptcies as what happened in 2008, the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit."
-- Bill O'Reilly. Especially with regard to the lying, torturing and pre-emptive war.

Conservative Myth Alert "This is the No Spin Zone."
-- Bill O'Reilly. Referring to his television show, which spins like a top.


Sarah Palin
Conservative Myth Alert "Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant — they’re quite clear — that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the Ten Commandments."
-- Sarah Palin, Republican governor of Alaska and 2008 vice-presidential candidate, showing her utter ignorance of the founding fathers and Constitution.

"Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, please refudiate."
-- Sarah Palin, proving she doesn't really believe in freedom and liberty... except for her kind.

"The news makes me sad, so I don't watch it."
-- Sarah Palin, suggesting she really is as out of touch with reality as it seems.

"The Vice-President is supreme boss of the Senate."
-- Sarah Palin, demonstrating her utter lack of political science. Probably a good thing she didn't become Vice-President; otherwise she would have likely thrown a temper-tantrum at her lack of power with the Senate.

"The people don't elect U.S. presidents, God does."
-- Sarah Palin, and hopefully conservatives will take this (albeit completely spiritually-whacked and anti-democratic) statement to heart and perhaps do some serious soul-searching. Obviously, God didn't like we He saw in McCain-Palin.

"He who warned uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh by ringing those bells, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."
-- Sarah Palin, attempting to describe who Paul Revere was, and not getting the story right or really making any sense at all. So, all in all, a typical Sarah Palin quotation.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?"
-- Sarah Palin, describing her own family's struggles with the American health care system (or more precisely lack thereof) and outreach to Canada's government-run (socialist) system, yet now proud of her militant opposition to "Obamacare," which will provide health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans... just like her family. However, ironic isn't really the word, Sarah. Cynical and hypocritical would be the better words to describe you.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
-- Sarah Palin, ascribing to ObamaCare the freewheeling "death panel" approach previously used by insurance companies, which was actually largely mitigated by ObamaCare.


Kathleen Parker
"Though Republicans profess to despise Big Government, especially the federal kind, it seems that what they really don’t like is Democracy — and indeed prefer a monarchy."
-- Kathleen Parker, conservative columnist on the fawning of conservatives over Donald Trump. Here Parker makes our point: conservatives do not believe in democracy or any other American value: liberty, equality, justice for all.


Rick Perry
Conservative Myth Alert "Abstinence works, I know it from my own personal life, abstinence works."
-- Rick Perry, Republican governor of Texas and 2012 presidential candidate. On Texas' policy of abstinence-only sex education. Texas has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.

"From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented."
-- Rick Perry, blaming God for human greed and malfeasance that caused the BP oil spill.

"Juarez is reported to be the most dangerous city in America."
-- Rick Perry, displaying his amazing geographical conflagration power, annexing Juarez, Mexico into the United States.


Judge Richard Posner
"I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made -- along with a lot of other smart people -- a fundamental mistake, which is that deregulation works fine in industries which do not pervade the economy,” he said in the appearance on Spitzer’s “Viewpoint.” “The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses in widespread bankruptcies as what happened in 2008, the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit."
-- Judge Richard Posner, professor of law at the University of Chicago, and federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

"The Constitution has to be interpreted loosely, otherwise it becomes a straitjacket. You can't interpret it literally. You can pretend to, and go digging around in 18th Century dictionaries to figure out what 'cruel and unusual punishment' meant or what the 'right to bear arms' meant, but that is all fake really. The Constitution has to be interpreted in light of modern needs, and that's what they (the strict interpreters) end up doing in spite of all their investigations."
-- Judge Richard Posner.


Colin Powell
Conservative Myth Alert "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more."
-- Colin Powell - Address to the United Nations Security Council, February 5, 2003. It was later documented that the "evidence" Powell presented before the United Nations was completely erroneous, and concocted by those in the administration who wanted to go to war.

"That (the statement above) is a blot on my record. It will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."
-- Colin Powell.

"I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming."
-- Colin Powell. Commenting on President Bush's claim that he was "sleeping like a baby" prior to war with Iraq.


Dan Quayle
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
-- Dan Quayle. Long before our present mangler-in-chief, we had the Quaylester, here trying to refer to the United Negro College Fund slogan: A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.

"I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix."
-- Dan Quayle.

"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people."
-- Dan Quayle.

"Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."
-- Dan Quayle.


Pat Robertson
Conservative Myth Alert "There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the left and we are not going to take it any more."
-- Pat Robertson, televangelist and one-time Republican presidential candidate. Right... leftist liars like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, et al.

Conservative Myth Alert "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
-- Pat Robertson.

"I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop."
-- Pat Robertson, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Anyone who truly believes this vile human being is actually a follower of Jesus Christ is about as lost as one can get.

Conservative Myth Alert "There are thirty to forty thousand left-wing professors in the United States who are "racists, murderers, sexual deviants and supporters of Al-Qaeda."
-- Pat Robertson, on liberal college professors. Isn't it strange how those most educated most annoy those who would impose their own values on the rest of us?

"It may be a blessing in disguise. Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Haitians were originally under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other."
-- Pat Robertson, explaining in his scientific, loving, Christian way why the Haitian earthquake occurred, and was a "blessing."


Ann Romney
"Maybe I should do all the talking and let him just stand here and watch me." Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, after Romney's truthful admission during the 2012 Michigan Primary, that his wife owns two Cadillacs among her car collection. Well, sure, Ann, and maybe you could continue doing that all through a prospective Romney presidency. Perhaps you are actually a little less tone-deaf and out of touch with the American people than your husband.


Theodore Roosevelt
We include T.R. here because he was a Republican, not so much a conservative. The second-greatest Republican fought hard against conservatives in his own party and against what he called "predatory wealth," to help the common man. A champion of workers and families, calling for a series of reforms, including a minimum wage, workman's compensation, child labor laws, the 8-hour workday, an income tax, an inheritance tax, and the strict regulation of securities. During the Miners Strike of 1902 Roosevelt threatened to send in the U.S. military in support of the miners union when the mining owners wouldn't negotiate fairly. T.R. also was the first true environmentalist in national politics. In defiance of Republican conservatives he stopped developers who wanted to "improve" the Grand Canyon. He would create five National Parks, 18 National Monuments, 150 National Forests, placing 230 million acres under public protection. He was one of the greatest presidents, celebrated on Mt. Rushmore, but un-celebrated by any modern conservative.

"I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our modern civilization. But I believe they should be so regulated that they shall act for the interests of the community as a whole."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"The dull, purblind folly of the very rich men, their greed and arrogance, and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"Malefactors of great wealth have arrogantly ignored the public welfare."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"Certain rich men, whose lives are evil and corrupt, are the representatives of predatory wealth accumulated by all forms of inequity, from the oppression of wage workers to unfair methods of crushing out competition."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"Americanism is a question of spirit, of conviction and purpose, not creed or birthplaces. The test of our worth is the service we render."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"The Constitution was made for the people, not the people for the Constitution."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"Speak softly, and carry a big stick."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"We have duties to others, and duties to ourselves, and we cannot shirk either."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"Constructive change offers the best method for avoiding destructive change."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living--a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit a reasonable saving for old age."
-- Theodore Roosevelt


Karl Rove
"The labor movement must be destroyed."
-- Karl Rove, primary political and campaign strategist for George W. Bush. Yes, things were so much better for conservative corporatists and industrialists before the labor movement solidified and brought American culture such things as a decent working wage, health care, retirement, workplace safety regulations, child labor laws, the 40 hour work week... and, of course, the weekend off. Of course, it also mobilized a huge block of liberal voters... so despite the fact that the labor movement has benefitted all Americans, conservative powers-that-be are determined to turn the clock back to the 1920s... and they are making signifant progress. Rove's anti-worker proclamation is in the process of being actualized.

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."
-- Karl Rove. Oh, so that's why you never got a college degree. Don't want to ever risk having too much education... might learn too many inconvenient truths.

Conservative Myth Alert "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
-- Karl Rove. An over-the-top mangling of the truth, and textbook example of conservatives dispicable politicalization of the tragedy of 9/11. In reality, conservatives were plotting for war against Iraq long before 9/11. Liberals (and, indeed, the majority of the world) were in accord and supportive with American strikes against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the people who actually planned the 9/11 attacks. Number of liberals in Congress or otherwise prominent calling for "therapy and understanding for our attackers": zero.

"We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him."
-- Karl Rove. Regarding a political operative who had displeased him. If you in the "morals" crowd out there actually believe that these are nice people, moral people, Christian people, you are in la-la land.

Conservative Myth Alert "Our party will win (in November) because we have an agenda to run on and that Americans agree on."
-- Karl Rove. Prior to the 2006 mid-term elections in which Republicans were swept out of power in the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate and several governerships. Wrong again, boy genius.


Donald Rumsfeld
Conservative Myth Alert "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
-- Donald Rumsfeld. Knowingly exaggerating --- really, really exaggerating -- the threat that Iraq posed to American security and to the world. The truth was that Iraq was a broken-down, tottering shell of its former militaristic self, and that several other nations, including North Korea, Iran, as well as potent factions in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia represented a far greater threat to American security.

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."
-- Donald Rumsfeld. And we certainly want to keep all of our wars as cheery as possible... especially those that might easily be perceived by the public as a big, fat mistake.

Conservative Myth Alert "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
-- Donald Rumsfeld. Wrong as wrong can be.

Conservative Myth Alert "We know where they [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."
-- Donald Rumsfeld. Lying through his teeth.

"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."
-- Donald Rumsfeld.

"Stuff happens."
-- Donald Rumsfeld. Dismissing the rampant looting and lawlessness that occurred following the American invasion of Iraq, and which clearly evidenced the Bush administration's lack of a post-invasion plan for securing the peace.


Rick Santorum
Conservative Myth Alert "This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, (and) influential country."
-- Rick Santorum, former Republican senator and presidential candiate. Yes, Rick, it is a spiritual war, and your brand of pseudo-spirituality, punitive-spirituality, angry, bitter, divisive, separate and violent religious zealotry would be the the far more likely hiding place of your "Father of Lies," or Satan, if such an odious and demented creature ever existed in the first place. Oh, that reminds us... your ilk invented him, and what a gift that was to innocent people all over the world. Oh, we forgot, there are no innocent people in your world... only wretches reeking with original sin.

"President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor that (tries) to indoctrinate them. Perhaps as many as 62 percent of students who enter college with some sort of faith commitment leave college without it. This is not a neutral setting. We have some real problems at our college campuses with political correctness, with an ideology that is forced upon people who, you know, who may not agree with the politically correct left doctrine. And one of the things that I’ve spoken out on — and will continue to speak out — is to make sure that conservative and more mainstream, common-sense conservative principles that have made this country great are reflected in our college courses and with college professors. And at many, many, and I would argue most institutions in this country, that simply isn’t the case."
-- Rick Santorum. Sixty-two percent of college students stop believing in the devil and Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark? That low a percentage? Damn, we've got a long way to go. Well, the problem, Rick, is that knowledge, truth, wisdom, science seems to have a liberal bias. Truth doesn't really have any bias at all, but the situation is that liberals have a worldview that accommodates the latest discoveries and a spirit of innovation, creativity and openness to different cultures. Conservatives desperately want to conserve the old myths, like the devil and a literal Genesis, and slavery and women's subjugation and prejudice, that sort of thing. So by their reaction to uncovered truth in the modern world, conservatives willingly give it over to the liberals. Thus, by virtue only of their own abdication and obstinance, truth seems to take on a liberal bias.

"Isn’t that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?"
-- Rick Santorum. Rick, Rick, Rick... and you wanted to be commander-in-chief! Sorry U.S. military, you're not involved in the real protection of America. What would Rick do if we were prez, send drones over San Francisco and Seattle?

"President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."
-- Rick Santorum. Yes, it's a shocker. Obama wants everyone to have a chance at a good job, which in our modern economy pretty much requires a college degree. And he wants everybody to be healthy, too. A snob, on the other hand, enjoys feeling better than others because he has these things and other don't... more like you, Rick.


Arnold Schwarzenegger
Conservative Myth Alert "I think gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman."
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Republican governor of California, displaying he was no slouch of a conservative language mangler.


Lamar Smith
"The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias."
-- Lamar Smith, Texas Republican Congressman, confusing both America with greedy conservatism and the media as liberal.


Richard Spencer
"Today, in the public imagination, 'ethnic-cleansing' has been associated with civil war and mass murder (understandably so). But this need not be the case. 1919 is a real example of successful ethnic redistribution—done by fiat, we should remember, but done peacefully."
-- Richard Spencer, who coined the term "Alt-Right," and is a leading icon in the movement.

"We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy."
-- Richard Spencer.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created unequal."
-- Richard Spencer.

"America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us."
-- Richard Spencer.

"To be white is to be a creator, an explorer, a conqueror."
-- Richard Spencer.

"I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans."
-- Richard Spencer.

"For us, it is conquer or die. This is a unique burden for the white man, that our fate is entirely in our hands."
-- Richard Spencer.


Randall Terry
"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country."
-- Randall Terry. Onetime Republican political candidate and leader of Operation Rescue explaining his conservative flavor of Christianity.


Strom Thurmond
Conservative Myth Alert "I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."
-- Strom Thurmond. Arch-conservative senator and unapologetic segregationist, though this did not stop him from having an affair (and a child) with an African-American woman.

"An American should be able choose to work in a place where he is with his kind of people and not find that at the counters, desk or benches they will be forced to work, side by side, with all types of people of all races; that in the lunchrooms, rest rooms, recreation rooms, they will be compelled by law to mingle with persons and races which all their lives they have by free choice, avoided in social and business intercourse."
-- Strom Thurmond.

Conservative Myth Alert "(Martin Luther) King demeans his race and retards the advancement of his people."
-- Strom Thurmond.


George Wallace
Conservative Myth Alert "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
-- George Wallace, governor of Alabama, 1963. A Democrat, but thoroughly conservative... and therefore, error prone, historically and morally.


James Watt
Conservative Myth Alert "We don't have to protect the environment. The Second Coming is at hand."
-- James Watt. Interior secretary appointed by Ronald Reagan, whose public duties included, uh, protecting the environment.


George Will
Conservative Myth Alert "Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose"
-- George Will, conservative columnist, admitting that conservatives never have any new ideas of their own, just opposition to the progress liberals propose.


Paul Wolfowitz
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."
-- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy secretary of defense. All foreigners... except us, of course. Wolfowitz was one of the architects of the Iraq invasion, arguing for it since the mid-1990s.

Conservative Myth Alert "There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
-- Paul Wolfowitz. Testimony before Congress, March 2003. The total eventual bill to U.S. taxpayers for the entire Iraq war, reconstruction, military equipment re-purchase and health care for wounded soldiers is now estimated at over two trillion dollars.


Conservative 9/11 Amnesia (Disinformation)

And now we present a very special species of conservative malevolence, manipulation and disinformation... a convenient collective fogginess regarding the conservatives who presided over the Presidency, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate when happened the greatest breach of security in the history of the United States of America. Conservatives have been manipulating this American tragedy since it happened, and they show no signs of stopping now. Indeed, they are desperate to brainwash as many people as possible to cover up for the abomination that was the Bush years. Otherwise, they know this stinking albatross carcass will hang around their political party's neck for decades. To wit their concerted effort to pull the wool over your eyes:

Conservative Myth Alert "We had no domestic attacks under Bush."
-- Rudy Giuliani, mayor (Republican) of New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

Conservative Myth Alert "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."
-- Dana Perrino, communications director, George W. Bush administration. Utterly astounding forgetfullness... but, of course, it's not forgetfullness at all, it's intentional, devious, malevolent propaganda.

Conservative Myth Alert "President Bush inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history."
-- Mary Matalin, counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Inherited? Huh? Who did he inherited it from? The Clinton Administration?

Conservative Myth Alert "I know this, my brother kept us safe."
-- Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, uttering perhaps the most stunningly false statement in the history of American politics. His brother, George W. Bush, was the sitting president during the 9-11-2001 terrorist attacks.


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