John Podhoretz Quotes

“There's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.”

— John Podhoretz

“Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.”

— John Podhoretz

“For the record, I am not an admitted homosexual, nor am I a homosexual, though I do know the lyrics to every show tune ever written, which might perhaps account for the confusion.”

— John Podhoretz

“Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.”

— John Podhoretz

“Back in 1995, Bill Gates himself didn't understand that the internet was the direction computing was going.”

— John Podhoretz

“Your race and gender don't change, but you can choose to change your political affiliation at will.”

— John Podhoretz

“The United States established itself as a trustworthy new nation in its first two decades after the Revolutionary War by paying its debts, even when many in the country believed it had no obligation to do so. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of this newspaper, insisted on it.”

— John Podhoretz

America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

— John Podhoretz

“Obama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them - even if their employees have it right.”

— John Podhoretz

“If you want to know why Republicans and conservatives are in a political crisis, you need only consider the fact that the Right's deeply held view now boils down to this: Taxes should not go up on the wealthy, and your health benefits should be cut.”

— John Podhoretz

Many people crave security and stability rather than risk-taking, and that doesn't make them any less American. They are the workers rather than the job creators, and all societies need both.

— John Podhoretz

“Obama learned from Ronald Reagan that it helps to strike an optimistic tone. But genuine optimism deriving from American exceptionalism, it turns out, does not come naturally to him.”

— John Podhoretz

“Here's a very good rule of thumb in politics: losing begets losing.”

— John Podhoretz

You'd think experienced political professionals would know better than to place their trust in exit polls, notoriously inaccurate surveys that had John Kerry winning the 2004 election by five points when he actually lost by three.

— John Podhoretz

Is victory sweet because your side wins - or is it really because the other side loses?

— John Podhoretz

Robots have a rich and storied history in movies.

— John Podhoretz

“Obama lost his ability to push his agenda through Congress when he received what he himself called a 'shellacking' in the November 2010 elections. That shellacking was primarily the result of massive policy overreach when he had a Democratic Congress in his pocket.”

— John Podhoretz

“Romney is right that the Obama vision is too centered on government. But his is too centered on the promotion of business and wealth creation at the expense of everything else.”

— John Podhoretz

“That distinctive presidential conduct is now gone forever, banished to the snows of yesteryear by Barack Obama. From the beginning of his presidency to the present, he has spoken specifically and in unprecedented fashion of Republicans as his rivals, his stumbling blocks, the primary cause of his troubles.”

— John Podhoretz

“Vice presidents are at times tasked with issuing direct broadsides against enemies while the top guy stays above the fray. But never before has a vice president served as an attack dog against his own party's voters.”

— John Podhoretz

While in Israel, Mitt Romney said something every sane person knows to be true: There is great cultural and political meaning in the fact that Israel has prospered while the Palestinians have festered.

— John Podhoretz

“All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.”

— John Podhoretz

“Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president.”

— John Podhoretz

Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.

— John Podhoretz

“By keeping most tax rates at present levels, Obama and the Democrats will claim that they have championed tax cuts for the middle class.”

— John Podhoretz

“The exit polls suggest that after a relatively disappointing first term, Obama managed to reassemble almost all of his 2008 electorate.”

— John Podhoretz

“For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.”

— John Podhoretz

“I don't feel alienated from American culture, but I understand people who do.”

— John Podhoretz

“I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion.”

— John Podhoretz

“I've worked as someone's deputy, and now it's time for me to run something. It's time for me to run my own shop.”

— John Podhoretz

“Obama's explanation for the slowdown in economic growth is that the public sector is hurting, and that's where Washington must step in and act.”

— John Podhoretz

“Obama's victory in November 2008 was a historic political accomplishment.”

— John Podhoretz

“Newt Gingrich never received more than 100,000 votes in his life. He'll never be president.”

— John Podhoretz

Obama is defining himself in a way that will destroy him.

— John Podhoretz

“She needs to seem tough, and whatever Hillary's weaknesses, tough is a pretty good word to describe her.”

— John Podhoretz

“We must say something, even when we know nothing.”

— John Podhoretz

“Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.”

— John Podhoretz

“It has never made any sense to argue that, unique among the people of the world, Arabs are more concerned on a day-to-day basis about the treatment of people they don't know than they are about how they're going to put food on their own tables, or whether their sons will ever find a job.”

— John Podhoretz

“Hurtling the Pentagon into an unprecedented budgetary meltdown is horrifically irresponsible. Obama doesn't care. This is war - not against the Taliban, but war against the GOP. He has Republicans on the ropes, and that's a victory he savors and desires - unlike Afghanistan, where he seems only to want to turn tail.”

— John Podhoretz

“In the Democratic primary in 2008, the Obama team devised a strategy to use the caucuses and a complicated system of awarding delegates in the state primaries to sneak up on Hillary Clinton and establish a lead Obama never surrendered.”

— John Podhoretz

“Obama's coalition would have consigned him to the political margins as little as 12 years ago, but the nation's demographic changes are moving far more quickly than most Republicans anticipated.”

— John Podhoretz

“Our compulsive hunger always to know first, speak first and decide first has only been amplified by the fact that we can now all participate instantly in a virtual version of a national cocktail-party conversation on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.”

— John Podhoretz

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

— John Podhoretz

Romney has adopted almost every position conservatives want their candidate to espouse: He's pro-life, he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he wants to cut taxes and cut the federal budget, and he wants an unapologetic foreign policy dedicated to the proposition that this too will be the American century.

— John Podhoretz

“As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.”

— John Podhoretz

“Comedians and impressionists used to be two different showbiz animals entirely, but now there's no such thing as a comedian who doesn't do impressions.”

— John Podhoretz

“Nixon in 1968, unlike Obama 2008, was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet, in 1972, he won what, in some measures, was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.”

— John Podhoretz

“All conservatives are bilingual we have to be. We speak both liberal and conservative. But liberals are monolingual - they don't have to be anything else. They speak liberal, and are completely ignorant of the conservative tongue.”

— John Podhoretz

“Imagine his delight after it 'leaked' that he will propose raising taxes on the wealthy by $320 billion over the next 10 years, including increases to the capital gains and inheritance taxes.”

— John Podhoretz

You know, you just know, that after the president goes out there and announces he wants to make community college free for all Americans - as though anything government does is 'free' - or is unilaterally and unconstitutionally legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants, he comes back to the offices, pulls out the presidential BlackBerry, and gleefully follows along as the Right goes completely ape over these wild policy decisions.

— John Podhoretz