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Americans don't like powerful figures who punch down, that is, who pick on someone less powerful and less able to speak for themselves than they are.

Mark Shields

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Mark Shields
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: May 25
Columnist
Writer
Weymouth
Massachusetts
Mark Stephen Shields
Someone
Punch
Able
Pick
Like
Picks
Figures
Americans
Powerful
Less
Speak

More quotes by Mark Shields

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Every measurement of where you have more public confidence in creating jobs, American prosperity, controlling crime, health care, providing education, all of these standards, Bill Clinton has considerably higher marks... The sole exception is on protecting taxes, which is initially his attack.
Mark Shields
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There is a cleavage and a divide in America like I have never seen before.
Mark Shields
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The advantage that hospitals have over other institutions is that hospitals are community-based. You can't outsource your work you can't move your emergency department to Pakistan.
Mark Shields
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Whether it's her [ Hillary Clinton] guarded privacy or whatever else, I mean, there has got to be some sense that this is a human being that I can identify.
Mark Shields
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The Republicans have, with some pride - George W. Bush won the White House by promising to restore dignity to the Oval Office. And they were or presented themselves as the family - the party of family values.
Mark Shields
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I don't hear any clear, coherent message [from Democrats]. I mean, when you're a party out of power, it's the time to be a national party chair.
Mark Shields
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Donald Trump is writing a different theme, which is it's midnight in America and that things are bad, and they're bleak, and they're gloomy and they're doomy, and the only thing that is going to save you is someone with the authority and power of somebody like me.
Mark Shields
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There's nothing wrong with being organized.Things that change history tend to be organized.
Mark Shields
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The final thing the Tea Party had was, they fed into the philosophy that Donald Trump now embodies. So they had a different view of how the world should be governed. And so they had a lot of things that we didn't appreciate going for them as time went by.
Mark Shields
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I think any advocate who is effective has fully acquainted himself or herself with the legislator they are going to meet. Know what committees they are on, what issues they are interested in, all in an effort to build a bridge for communicating with them.
Mark Shields
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My church [Catholisism] is hurting from arrogance and from its indifference to the suffering of children that were abused and the inclination of the leadership to protect the institution, rather than the children.
Mark Shields
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[Donald] Trump is instructive.For Trump, it was that the global economy and the international world order were failing regular people.
Mark Shields
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Steve Bannon went to the Conservative Political Action Conference and he said that there was a very important historical turning point, getting rid of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And the Republican Party has stood for that for as long as I have been alive.
Mark Shields
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The Democrats have to do what he did when [Rahm Emanuel] was chairman of the Democratic House Campaign Committee, recruit veterans, recruit football players, recruit business people. And I think that's what the job of the new party chair has to be.
Mark Shields
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Once I accuse you of racist, I have demonized you, and it means any future collaboration, cooperation between us is a sign of my moral deficiency, if I would deal with someone like that. It's a terrible thing to do.
Mark Shields
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Donald Trump is an independent presidential candidate who ran on the Republican label. He really did. He took it over. He transformed it into his image, in his likeness.
Mark Shields
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The corporations who invest in lobbyists, it pays in terms of tax loopholes, tax subsidies, all the rest. It pays. Clearly, the money has a big effect.
Mark Shields
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There is nothing more basic to our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.
Mark Shields
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Clinton's major problem, and the two aren't separable really because there is hope in the country, the hope - - optimism has slipped dramatically, make no mistake about every measurement shows that. But the hope is still there. Hope is with him. People want change. They see him as the best chance for change.
Mark Shields
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Big money buys access in Washington, and access purchases influence. It is as simple as that. And they have basically given a green light, a further green light, after Citizens United, to the biggest money to have the bigger voice in our politics, and to sound out and drown out the voice of just ordinary citizens.
Mark Shields