GEORGE W. BUSH

" "I wondered from the first, if the President didn't know the questions to ask, or if he did know and just not want to know the answers? He's like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."
-- Paul O'Neill. Former Bush administration Treasurery Secretary on George W. Bush.

"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we’ve experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign."
William F. Buckley Jr. on George W. Bush.

“One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed....different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.”
-- William F. Buckley Jr. on George W. Bush's Iraq fiasco.

"He's a Pat Robertson Republican."
-- John McCain, remarking on Bush's beholdenment to activist religious right pastors.

JOHN MCCAIN

In the 2000 Republican primary, only four out of 55 Republican senators (those who should know him best) supported McCain for president.

"I don't think [McCain] has the temperament and leadership ability to move the country in the right direction ... I don't know anybody in Washington who has worked extensively with the senator from Arizona who doesn't have a story to tell."
-- Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum on John McCain.

"The thought of McCain being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
-- Republican Senator Thad Cochran.

"I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger."
-- Republican Senator Pete Dominici explaining why he wouldn't endorse McCain in the 2000 primary.

"Here this poor guy is thinking he has done a good job, and he gets a new butt ripped because McCain didn't look good on television. There were an awful lot of people in the room. You'd have to stick cotton in your ears not to hear it. McCain was screaming at him, and he was red in the face."
-- Former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party Jon Hinz on an incident in 1986 when McCain exploded in a foul-mouthed rage a young volunteer had set up the wrong sized lectern for McCain, who had earlier in the evening had just won his seat in the Senate. So this is how McCain acts when he is happy!

"We’re in a different place on immigration; we’re in a different place on campaign reform; we’re in a different place on same–sex marriage; we’re in a different place on the president’s policy on interrogation of detainees. I'm a conservative Republican."
-- Mitt Romney on the difference between himself and John McCain.

"His whole career is wrapped up in the military, national security. He's in Putin's face. He's threatening the Iranians. He wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years. What John McCain is telling you is what he's promising you. What he said is, "Make no mistake, there are going to be more wars." That is straight talk. To be quite frank, you get John McCain in the White House and I do believe we will be at war with Iran. That is one of the things that makes me very nervous about him."
-- Pat Buchanan, former Republican presidential candidate

"When the deregulation was the wave through Washington, he surfed that wave. Now it's not, and the populist inside John McCain is out."
-- George Will, conservative columnist

"The number of fellow Senators who think John McCain is psychologically unstable is large. 'The man is unhinged,' one Senator told me. 'He is frighteningly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.'"
-- Jack Wheeler, former Republican operative

"A McCain presidency will be the destruction of the Republican Party."
-- Rush Limbaugh, conservative talkshow host

SARAH PALIN

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what to say. You can't say anything. I think they ought to be honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia.' That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."
-- Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator

"The choice of Palin remains deeply problematic. It's clear that McCain picked her because he had decided that he needed a game-changer. The vice president's only constitutional duty of any significance is to become president at a moment's notice. Palin is not ready."
-- Charles Krauthammer, conservative columnist

"The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience."
-- George Will, conservative columnist

"The most qualified? No. I think they went for (Palin), excuse me, political (expletive) about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it."
-- Peggn Noonan, conservative speechwriter

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
-- Lyda Green, Republican member of the Alaskan senate (who represents Palin's hometown of Wasilla)

"She's not qualified, she doesn't have the judgment to be next in line to the president of the United States."
-- Larry Persily, who until June worked in Governor Palin's Washington office as a congressional liaison

"(Trying to make Palin) the VP of our country is probably the worst mistake of (McCain's) entire life."
-- Sherry Whitstine, conservative Alaskan blogger

"Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation’s when he created the possibility that she might fill it."
-- Jim Whitaker, Republican mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska

"She doesn't know enough about economics or foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion. Palin's recent interviews... have revealed a candidate who is out of her league. If BS was currency, Palin could bail out Wall Stree herself. She should bow out."
-- Kathleen Parker, conservative columnist

"I have been disturbed about the choice (of Palin) from the start, as you know. And I have not seen any reason to feel less disturbed ... She really could be president! And here's where my fellow conservatives really worry me. They are so attracted by the symbolism of the selection that they show no concern — never mind for her executive competence — even for her views."
-- Andrew Sullivan, conservative columnist

"The longer I think about it, the less well this selection sits with me. And I increasingly doubt that it will prove good politics. The Palin choice looks cynical. Ms. Palin's experience in government makes Barack Obama look like George C. Marshall. She has zero foreign policy experience, and no record on national security issues. The McCain campaign's slogan is 'country first.' But question: If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?"
-- David Frum, conservative speechwriter and American Enterprise Institute resident fellow

RICHARD NIXON

"Richard Nixon was the most dishonest person I ever met in my entire life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world."
-- Barry Goldwater

"The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election."
-- Gerald Ford. On Richard Nixon and his henchmen.

"I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."
-- Gerald Ford.

EVANGICAL REPUBLICANS

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

"I think every good Christian ought to kick (Jerry) Falwell right in the ass."
-- Barry Goldwater

KARL ROVE

"Karl Rove is way beyond anything Nixon had at his disposal. He is closer to a behind-the-scenes Nixon operator named Murray Chotiner, who could cut off an opponent at the knees so quickly the person did not immediately realize he had been crippled. As I note in the book, the first time I heard the name Karl Rove was when I was asked if I knew anything about him by one of the Watergate special prosecutors who was investigating campaign dirty tricks. I didn't have any knowledge. But I recalled that question when working on this book, and located a memorandum in the files of the Watergate prosecutor's office that indicates they were asking others as well about Rove. Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him."
-- John Dean

MITT ROMNEY

"Governor Romney is trying to divide the Republican Party and his disparagement of one of our Party's greatest leaders is a sad commentary on Governor Romney's increasingly bitter campaign."
-- John McCain on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

"As the liberal governor of Massachusetts, he raised taxes $750 million. He is involved in a wholesale deception of voters. He has been entirely consistent. He has consistently taken two sides of every major issue, sometimes more than two. So congratulations."
-- John McCain

HERBERT HOOVER

"For six years that man has given me unsolicited advice... all of it bad."
-- Calvin Coolidge

REPUBLICAN VALUES

"My great concern, manifested especially since 9/11, is the assaults on our fundamental civil liberties by this administration. [That's] personified, for example, in the disregard for the rule of law as exhibited by the warrantless NSA [National Security Agency] electronic surveillance in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. More recently, [there were] documented abuses at the FBI in carrying out certain of the expanded powers granted in the Patriot Act, namely, national security letters. And in January of this year, the testimony by the attorney general that this administration does not believe that the fundamental right to a writ of habeas corpus is an important, fundamental, constitutional guarantee. So what we have is a party, the Republican Party, to which I was very proud to belong for many, many years, no longer being committed to a core conservative philosophy."
-- Former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) on the George W. Bush administration. Click Here for more from Bob Barr on this subject.

"The Republican Party looks at massive immigration, legal and illegal, as a source of cheap labor, satisfying a very important constituency."
-- Tom Tancredo, Republican congressman (Colorado)

-- Rusticus