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Political parties are complicated coalitions and aren't excessively theoretical.

William Kristol

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William Kristol
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More quotes by William Kristol

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I think the whole dynamic is different. Whereas in [Barack] Obama's case, even though there was no incumbent, he was able to run against eight years of Bush-Cheney and a Republican Congress, and everyone was tired of everything. He was able to benefit from that.
William Kristol
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You all would be really shocked, if you were dropped back down into when I went to college, by the narrowness of the opinions you could get just by reading newspapers and magazines and watching TV.
William Kristol
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I don't think you want political parties that are entirely driven by some extremely doctrinal ideology.
William Kristol
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Fox gets two million viewers a night, and MSNBC gets one. It's four million people, five million people, and 130 million people are going to vote. There are an awful lot of voters, and an awful lot of politically engaged, intelligent people who are not hanging on whatever happens on Bill O'Reilly or Rachel Maddow.
William Kristol
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Frankly, if you're 26 years old and there's a war on women or there's not a war on women, you can get all wrapped up in it and get lots of traffic on your website and get into exchanges and scream and yell about it on MSNBC or Fox, and a week later no one can remember what that was about.
William Kristol
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There's a sort of romanticizing of the past. When you actually think about the past, you know it's a little different.
William Kristol
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Going from three TV channels to broadcast TV to cable to talk radio obviously the online explosion has changed things.
William Kristol
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For all the talk about the bitterness and the partisanship in American politics, is it really that bitter and partisan? Think of American history. Think of Joseph McCarthy. Think of the New Left. Think of [George] McGovern. Think of [Ronald] Reagan. Think of George Wallace. We've had an awful lot of real extremism on both wings.
William Kristol
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There are a few things [Donald Trump] has been pretty clear he'll do. A big infrastructure program that he'll get bipartisan support for.
William Kristol
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[the war in Iraq] could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East
William Kristol
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Iraq's always been very secular.
William Kristol
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I think it's fine that there are five million people who are watching [politics on TV], and obviously I'm happy they are since they're on the air, and there are a couple hundred thousand people reading The Weekly Standard online, and that's great too, but most Americans aren't engaged that intensely, and are much less partisan.
William Kristol
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Whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea.
William Kristol
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[Among conservatives] there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people'.... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons.... We...are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants.
William Kristol
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I'm happy to have interns at The Weekly Standard and happy to have readers of The Weekly Standard, but if you all tell me that you were busy reading Plato and [Lev] Tolstoy and playing violin in the orchestra, I'd say that was great. I wouldn't tell you to take time out from that to get involved in political journalism.
William Kristol
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People used to complain in the 50s and 60s and even in the 70s when I was in school, studying political science, that if only we could have two political parties that presented a choice, but there were all these liberal Republicans and there were all these southern Democrats who are conservative so people just don't have a clear choice.
William Kristol
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I think there was a moment in the middle part of the century into the 60s, 70s when at least elite journalism claimed to be non-partisan. You can go back and look at it and wonder about how non-partisan it was.
William Kristol
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People read the Tribune or the Sun-Times, you know, way back when the Tribune was a right-wing paper.It's always been somewhat that way. We take 10, 20 years in the 50s and 60s as kind of the norm, when there was this sort of bi-partisan parent consensus.
William Kristol
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[Donald ] Trump is more important than all of us. He's more important than the media.
William Kristol
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White women are a problem, that's, you know - we all live with that.
William Kristol