Norman Ornstein Quotations

Government is inevitably going to play a very significant role in infrastructure, and in a country with a federal system where vibrancy and economic health depend on interstate commerce, it's not going to be private enterprise or state governments that will give you things like an interstate highway system.

Radicals don't care about the institutions. They are looking for an ideological crusade. Traditions don't matter.

The best way to get your audience larger and more consistent is to be more divisive and more radical and criticize those who cater to or kowtow to other forces.

Conservatives want smaller government. They want to focus on market-based solutions wherever one can. They want to have as little regulation as possible. But in general, they recognize that government must play an important role for a society to operate.

What they've done, at least, is to give themselves a little breathing room from what was going to be a really ugly confrontation, and one that was a complete lose-lose for Republicans, no matter what.

Lots of members have been appalled at the kind of Gilded Age mentality of the party. Others felt like they had to take one for the team.

Let's face it. When you're the governor of New York and even mentioned as a presidential candidate, you're going to be under an enormous microscope.

My understanding is that now, after taking soundings, he's thinking about running for leader.

But, after the terrible lapses that occurred here, they are going to be on the defensive, and the ability to push other things onto the agenda will be limited.

There is extreme nervousness about November. The last thing that members want is to be out there in a tough campaign, where the wind is at your face, defending the indefensible.

Having a lot of time left as president is a good thing for him, because it gives him the opportunities and time to get out of some of these holes.

I think it's clear we're in damage control now.

I think Specter is going to be protective of Roberts against what he thinks are intrusive questions. But if he thinks Roberts is not even beginning to address larger questions of philosophy of judging, then I think he'll be unhappy.

President Bush right now is in the midst of a very severe case of second-term blues.

President Bush right now is in a very serious case of second-term blues. It may be the avian flu of second-term blues.

Some members are pulling the blanket over their heads and hoping the storm will pass. For others, there is also a genuine belief that if you just jump in a spasm of reaction, you could do some things detrimental to a good deliberative process.

That would have been a big plus for the president. You get the blame when you're the top dog. And in this case, I think there is no doubt that we had inadequate preparation and we've had inadequate response.

You have smart people and a lot of money at stake. People are going to find loopholes.

The pending complaint on DeLay was on the Texas case (over political fund raising),

We build people up who have positions of power or visibility and venerate them and then have to show they have feet of clay.

When you have a dramatic expansion of the ability of individual members to direct federal funds or to designate contracts, you are creating the most fertile environment for corruption imaginable.

What she did just makes you cringe. It's clearly unethical by any standard.

To a large degree the durability of this compromise is going to depend on the actions of President Bush. He can keep it or blow it up. It depends on what kind of judges he nominates.

Everything that surrounded the K Street Project and what flowed from it all of that is under intense pressure.

Even if the reality is, there's nothing more that he could have done back in Washington or anywhere else ... the symbol matters.

Even those people in the leadership who've done commendable jobs may find themselves in the cross hairs just because it's possible there will be a more widespread desire for change.

Congress as a whole needs to step back and look at the way it conducts its business. It's not just lobbyists influencing members of Congress, it's members of Congress shaking down lobbyists for money.

There's no question that it will hurt him and it will hurt him significantly. He's still getting the solid support from his base. The question now is whether his performance with the hurricane begins to affect his performance with his base.

It would have gone past us as just one of those moments where each side was teeing off against the other. But that event punctuated things, and I do think it made a difference in the coverage of the hearings.

It was very significant two years ago when Greenspan endorsed the first Bush tax cut plan. So his basically lukewarm attitude now, saying that some of these ideas are good things in principle, but not at the expense of large deficits, has to weigh heavily on those moderate Republicans.

This is a major fork in the road for him.

There's a sense that there is a culture of cronyism and corruption and incompetence

It's a self-perpetuating system involving interests, members of Congress, people in the executive branch and patronage positions and so on.

It's a disaster for DeLay. They've not only formally started the process, but this is a public petition.

It's the most expansive vision of the executive power of a president in our lifetime. To suggest that (Congress has) given him a blanket authority to do what he has done is a vast stretch.

I'm sure that he's growing a little tired of members taking what he believes are gratuitous personal shots at him,

If you passed a steroids bill now while letting the deficit careen out of control and not doing much to get Iraq on track, they would attract a lot of ridicule for spending their time on it,