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Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can’t do anything because they’re tied up in knots.

Barney Frank

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Barney Frank
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: March 31
Former U.S. Representative
Politician
Bayonne
New Jersey
Barnett Frank
Moderates
Reverse
Tied
Republicans
Ties
Republican
Tell
Knots
Anything
Moderate

More quotes by Barney Frank

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Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there's no hierarchy.
Barney Frank
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I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.
Barney Frank
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I have been mislabeled as a big advocate of low-income home ownership over rental.
Barney Frank
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I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed.
Barney Frank
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Ridicule is about the most powerful weapon possible.
Barney Frank
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In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view.
Barney Frank
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I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed - for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late '50s, early '60s - that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist.
Barney Frank
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There are no moderate Republicans left, with the exception of a few who would vote with us when it doesn’t make any difference,” Frank said. “It’s the most rigid ideological party since before the Civil War. … The bumper sticker I’m going to have printed up for Democrats this year is, ‘We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.’
Barney Frank
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When I was here there was still a requirement that students had to swim 50 yards to graduate...because Harry Elkins Widener had drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. And it made me very grateful at the time that he had not gone down in a plane crash.
Barney Frank
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The fact that theyre a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that its National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.
Barney Frank
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They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who's getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn't know how to promote homosexuality.
Barney Frank
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I think there was an absolute, deep gap between consensual relations between adults, which people may like or dislike, and people who physically impose themselves on children or misuse their authority to impose on children.
Barney Frank
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The Moral Majority supports legislators who oppose abortions but also oppose child nutrition and day care. From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
Barney Frank
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There were a lot of Romneys. There's the Romney who was going to be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy now there's a Romney who checks with Rick Santorum on that issue.
Barney Frank
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The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.
Barney Frank
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There is an irony that the most active anti-gay groups are Al-Qaeda and the American Right wing.
Barney Frank
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The people who started the American government, the founders of the Constitution, didn't like political parties but they were forced to start them. Nobody ever created political parties in England, they evolved. And there do tend to be two general tendencies that focus around how much government you think you need.
Barney Frank
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They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won't be able to be outraged anymore.
Barney Frank
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I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals.
Barney Frank
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I am not aware of any specific provision that mandates any tightening of lending to small business other than a requirement that people who lend and then sell that loan be prepared to take a part of the risk. And I'm proud of that.
Barney Frank