Cal Jillson Quotations

Lots of businesses already have domestic-partner benefits and those are already resolved. What business groups need is stability; they need to know what the law is and move on.

Since the late 1920s Texas has almost consistently had a member of the high leadership in either the House or Senate or both. We simply don't have that anymore.

I expect him to make it through the primary fairly handily, but my sense of this is that DeLay is in trouble over the course of this election cycle.

For most voters, schools are the No. 1 issue,

He has some time, maybe six to nine months, to convince Americans we are on a clear path to a stable, democratic Iraq. If that remains unclear by next summer, the attacks by Democrats will become unrestrained and Republicans will be running for cover.

President Bush is trying to regain his footing and develop some policy momentum for his second term, and this is just another weight around his ankles.

People know we're running huge deficits and they know the costs have just rocketed upward. Many Americans are now looking at the Iraq situation in that context.

People have real reservations about the Republicans, but they aren't clear what the Democrats stand for. There is a widely perceived general disarray in the Democratic Party. It's too early yet for a leader to emerge.

That was an effective strategy to get through the primary. But in the general election, he'll have to face Lampson and Steve Stockman, as well as the press, both local and national.

The president is doing the right thing to assure people that the federal government is much better prepared for Rita than it was for Katrina.

At some point they'll have to be summoned to the table.

There's going to be significant and long-term damage to Bush, especially because this disaster comes on the heels of a slow bleeding of his approval ratings over the past year that accelerated over the summer.

There's no way back for Bush on Iraq. He can't run away from that policy. He has to secure something he can plausibly point to as success.

is going to plague him not only in his second term but in history even in Texas.

DeLay did what he had to do to remain a plausible candidate in November. But he's got a tremendous amount of work to do still. He goes forward into a meat grinder.

The Bush administration is in significant difficulty, and the leading figures in both the House and the Senate are in significant difficulty. All of these difficulties are going to go on.

This isn't a good day for Tom Craddick. A number of his very close associates were indicted in circumstances he was actively involved in, ... There is guilt by association, but if (Craddick) is not indicted, it's almost like being declared innocent.

The Republican governor and the Republican majority in the Legislature are unable to close that out. The fact they have failed to deal with public education, either education reforms or funding, has come home to roost.

It makes you wonder, when they have so many problems, why they would let this fester the way they have.

It's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice. The fact that he wasn't able to build on that achievement (in 1996) is a comment on the uniqueness of that race and what he had to offer as a candidate.

It will pass in Texas by a vote of 2-to-1,

The ministers may think this is a religious, biblical issue but for Perry, while it may be that too, it's also a powerful political tool.

If you're betting your own money, you bet on Perry (to win re-election). But he can be beaten because there are reservations about him that run deep.

I think of 2002 as the last gasp of the old order. The first gasp of the new order might well be 2010.

If DeLay were not indicted, he probably wouldn't even have a strong enough opponent where he would have to spend all that money on his own race.

I consider DeLay in significant danger of losing his seat in the general election.

The glow of the first week of an unrestricted generosity is wearing off, ... Now we're on to the stories of crime and cost and what are these guys going to do to the partisan balance.