Ed Rollins Quotations

The Republican Party, which John McCain led as our nominee in 2008, is going to become irrelevant if we become the party of intolerance and hate. The party founded by Abraham Lincoln was a party that fought slavery and intolerance at every level.

When the Republicans controlled the House from 1994 -2006, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman Charlie Rangel, John Conyers and Rahm Emanuel weren't saying we need to move right to win. They stuck to their philosophy. And they fought against Reagan and they fought against the Bushes. And eventually they did win.

One of the reasons a strategist never sits in a stadium and gets caught up in the crowds - and never sits watching a debate in person - is because the vast majority of American voters watch these political events on television.

What we won't become is a 'Democratic Party lite!' We are a party that wants smaller government and lower taxes. Obama and the Democrats do not. We are a party that wants to encourage small business. We are a party that has a large constituent group that believes in a social agenda and we will not abandon them.

I have been a practitioner of tough politics for many decades. There is little that amazes me and even less that shocks me.

There's no smarter politician out there than Bill Clinton.

Everybody in this race is against Obama, okay? So saying you're against Obama, against Obamacare, all the rest, it's all fine, well and good, except it doesn't move you forward.

I am not predicting here that Obama will fail like Jimmy Carter. What I am predicting is the Republican Party is not extinct and will after a period of time become a strong opposition party.

I became a Republican in the summer of 1972. I was involved in running President Nixon's re-election campaign in California and became part of his administration at the start of his second term.

I think to a certain extent, Clinton may have expected as the senior president that Obama would've reached out to him and asked for his council; he's done that very little. So, I think the relationship has not been good over the years.

I believe in sometimes getting mad and always getting even.

The American economy is driven by small business. And there's nothing basically to create incentives for small businesses. We've done no tax reform. They're the highest-taxed group in the country. And corporations can go anywhere they want and do whatever they want. Small businesses have to stay...

By the time you get to year six, there's never a break . . . and you get tired. There's always a crisis. It wears you down. This has been a White House that hasn't really had much change at all. There is a fatigue factor that builds up. You sometimes don't see the crisis approaching. You're not as on guard as you once were.

Television is such a staple of modern society that for most voters, it's not real unless it's on the tube.

My advice was that it was going to be very difficult, but at the end of the day, I don't tell candidates what to do.

I wish them well. My sense is these people are more than adequate to run a proper campaign.

If this was a European parliamentary system, it would have been a vote of no-confidence.

I do not think it is a lasting issue. I think it is just a series of things that this administration has done that makes it look like they are not always forthcoming.

From my perspective, if getting 24 percent of the vote is a victory, than we probably need a new party chairman and we probably need a new thought process.

We've got to win them one at a time.

Katherine wasn't listening to us and didn't agree on the direction of the campaign.

Someone like Adam Goodman, who knows Florida and is better than anybody in the business, wasn't being appreciated. We're professionals. We're doing the best we can, but if she doesn't want to take the advice, fine. We'll move on.

I wasn't the first one out the door. I was the last one out the door and I did everything I could to hold it together.

You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising budget is big enough.

We're trying to change that. I think from our perspective we want a primary and at the end of the day, if he (Spencer) thinks he's such a great candidate, he should want a primary, too.

To what do you attribute the victory of Todd-Whitman,

Either we bog down Hillary Clinton in 2006, in New York, or we give Hillary a free pass, let her build up chips around the country by helping other candidates, and walk out of New York with a big win and become unstoppable for 2008. Republicans have to get serious about a challenger to Hillary right now.

At the end of the day, we all basically work as a team to help the candidate. None of us are irreplaceable, but Adam probably comes as close as anyone could be.

It would be a very big mistake to think John Spencer - no offense to John, who I guess was a decent enough mayor - to move him to a level of where anyone is going to take him seriously as a U.S. Senate candidate. Unfortunately, John Spencer wouldn't know which side of the Capitol the U.S. Senate meets.

People don't view him as a Republican or Democrat, and he has the resources to run without having to worry about funding.

There will be a lot of interpretations at the end of it.

It's a good issue to define your opponent. If your opponent is for flag burning, he's got to go through a very sophisticated explanation.

Clearly this was Dick Morris' day in the sun. And if he would have been careful and obviously not been quite as bravado to his pillow mate, the reality is he could have had a very lucrative career in the future.

be extremely destructive if for some reason they change the rules and if there is not the opportunity to filibuster.

If he is the nominee of this party, there are no money people anywhere that are going to come.

I don't want to say anything derogatory. I'm done.

All we can do is tell our side.

The country has given up on him. It's too late to turn it around.