Republican governors are more lunatic than they used to be – as attested by all the ones so eager to turn down free federal money to qualify more of their poor citizens for Medicaid under Obamacare. Meanwhile, some states have taken the money only to hoard it. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
One thing Republicans understand: In American elections, you have to choose from among only two people – not between the perfect and the good. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
All right-wing antigovernment rage in America bears a racial component, because liberalism is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as the ideology that steals from hard-working, taxpaying whites and gives the spoils to indolent, grasping blacks. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
I feel bound to respect Ronald Reagan, as every American should – not least because he chose a career of public service when he could have made a lot more money doing something else, and not least because he took genuine risks for peace. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
Ronald Reagan knew audiences. It was a key element of his political genius. One of the things at which brilliant politicians are better than mediocre ones is smelling new public concerns over the horizon before they are picked up by polls – before the public even knows to call them ‘issues’ at all. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
That’s the way cultural change works in America: the rest of us discard a prejudice that the Right still clings to; in the fullness of time, the Right comes around, too, deploying clever rationalizations to forget they ever bore the prejudice in the first place. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
Call it Camelot’s revenge: the class of court scribes who made it their profession to uphold a make-believe version of America free of conflict and ruled by noble men helped Nixon get away with it for so long – because, after all, America was ruled by noble men. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
For liberals, generally speaking, honoring procedures – means – is the core of what being ‘principled’ means. For conservatives, fighting for the right outcome – ends – even at the expense of procedural nicety, is what being ‘principled’ means. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
Conservatives are time-biders. And they understand, as Corey Robin explains in his indispensable book ‘The Reactionary Mind,’ that the direction of human history is not on their side – that is why they are reactionaries – because, other things equal, civilization does tend towards more inclusion, more emancipation, more liberalism. Rick Perlstein Read Quote
