I think the failures of Republican governance led to a distrust of Republican elites, which is fair enough. Bill Kristol Read Quote
I’m absolutist on Trump. He shouldn’t be president. We should limit the damage he can do as president. And we should try as hard as we can to prevent him from being renominated or reelected. Bill Kristol Read Quote
In terms of the conservative movement, I do think it would be foolish to deny that Trump has exposed certain aspects of that movement as less healthy than I thought or hoped. Bill Kristol Read Quote
To the credit of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, people have been expelled or marginalized. Pat Buchanan in the ’90s. Ron Paul, Rand Paul in the first decade of this century. Bill Buckley famously expelled the Birchers in 1964. It’s been a movement that’s tried to maintain its boundaries. Bill Kristol Read Quote
I was involved in the ‘reformicon’ effort in 2013-2014, which was explicitly, ‘We can’t just Xerox Reagan.’ In the spirit of Reagan, actually, we could rethink things – maybe we need to think more about job-training programs, earned income tax credit, adjust the tax code. Bill Kristol Read Quote
In many cases, it’s a choice. There are many, many human beings through history – millions and millions and millions – who have been both homosexual at times in their lives and then heterosexual, or vice-versa, or bisexual. How can it be a biological imperative if people can change? Bill Kristol Read Quote
Conservatives shouldn’t count on the Supreme Court to do our work for us on Obamacare. The Court may rule as it should, and strike down the mandate. But it may not. And even if it does, the future of health care in America – and for that matter, the future of limited government – depends ultimately on the verdict of the American people. Bill Kristol Read Quote
Power tends to corrupt – so we should, in both the public and the private spheres, be on guard against, and erect sturdy guardrails against, the corruptions of power. Bill Kristol Read Quote
If cleverness has often been a sign of decadence throughout history, the attempt to be too clever by half is an even more reliable marker of cultural decline. Bill Kristol Read Quote
