Notable Quotables: Forget What Voters Said, It's Time to Raise Taxes
Forget What Voters Said, It's Time for Higher Taxes
Host Christiane Amanpour: "There are many economists who simply say the math does not add up, if you're not going to agree to raising taxes. Do you agree that taxes will have to be raised, as well?"
Senator-elect Rand Paul: "Well, I think it's not a revenue problem. It's a spending problem."
Amanpour: "But it is a revenue problem according to so many economists.... Without making strong entitlement and other cuts, and even if one does, most of the economists say the math does not add up to keep tax cuts on and on and on. Will you agree to some?"
- ABC's This Week, November 7.
"Republicans and Democrats have to come to grips with the fact that you may have to raise taxes if you really want to bring the budget under control at some point."
- Host David Gregory to the National Urban League's Marc Morial on Meet the Press, November 7.
Stockman "Brave" Now That He's Pushing Higher Taxes
"With our national debt in the trillions, budget experts will tell you that just taxing the rich isn't enough. One Republican brave enough to go public is David Stockman, President Reagan's budget director. He says all the Bush tax cuts should be eliminated - even those on the middle class. And he says his own Republican Party has gone too far with its anti-tax religion."
- CBS's Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, October 31.
Andrea Warns Team Obama on Taxes: Don't Go Wobbly!
Host Andrea Mitchell: "How does extending tax cuts for the very - the wealthy, the millionaires, how does that help the unemployed?"
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis: "Well, in my opinion, given our analysis, it's not going to be a job creator...."
Mitchell: "Then why is the President willing to negotiate that away now? Is it because he's negotiating from weakness?"
- MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, November 5.
Tea Party Must Compromise With Repudiated Obama
"You know what you have heard the Republicans say over and over and over again for the last two months, 'No compromise, no compromise, no compromise.' They want to reduce taxes, they want to reduce the deficit. Is there really, in terms of those kinds of issues, anything you can agree on?...You also understand that the Republicans' top agenda item is to dismantle health care."
- CBS's Harry Smith to newly reelected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on The Early Show, November 3.
Grumpy NBC: Tea Party About to "Bump Up Against Reality"
NBC's Tom Brokaw: "Matt Kibbe, who speaks for Freedom Works, the Dick Armey organization has said, 'We want this message to go across the country. The people want less from their federal government.' We've heard that before, when it bumps up against reality and you're talking about closing a base or shutting down an agricultural substation of some kind, then it gets pretty tough to do, Brian."
Anchor Brian Williams: "Reminds me of the signs at more than one rally this past season: 'Get the government out of my Social Security. Get the government out of my Medicare.'"
- During NBC's election night coverage, November 2.
Saluting Lincoln Chafee: A Liberal "Voice for Reason"
"He's a tiny little ray of hope. He's a moderate Republican, actually a liberal Republican, a type that used to exist - I think did the Republican Party a lot of good....He is a voice for reason in the Republican Party."
- Longtime Newsweek veteran Evan Thomas on the October 29 Inside Washington, talking about Lincoln Chafee's independent bid for governor of Rhode Island.
Ruing "Poignant" Loss of Liberal "Maverick"
"Senator Russ Feingold, a liberal with a fierce streak of independence who crusaded against the influence of money in politics, was toppled Tuesday in a campaign awash in the kind of unregulated cash he had struggled to keep out of the system. And in a poignant twist, the loss came, in part, because independents flocked to his opponent, despite Mr. Feingold's record of one maverick vote after another."
- New York Times reporter Katharine Seelye, November 5 article.
Four "Conservative" Labels vs. None for Liberal Sestak
"It's a very rough race. This is a Republican fiscal conservative who was fiscally conservative before the Tea Party was cool. And now with Tea Party help, he is ahead in a Democratic state. Extra firepower [Bill Clinton] in Pennsylvania tonight to help Democrat Joe Sestak....Toomey is a former Congressman and a fiscal conservative....Toomey, who led a conservative Washington interest group, Club for Growth, is campaigning as an outsider against Sestak, a Congressman...."
- Andrea Mitchell, October 27 NBC Nightly News. In 2009, Sestak scored a nearly perfect 95% from the liberal ADA; the American Conservative Union gave him a zero.
Debunking "Myth" that Election Was Bad News for Democrats
"Even as they were electing Republicans in huge numbers, a majority of voters said they had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party....Voters were fairly evenly divided on what many Republicans made Exhibit A in their case that the Obama administration had overreached: the new health care law....Voters were also divided on questions of taxing and spending.....And despite what politicians, political analysts and pundits have been saying for weeks, if not months, most of the voters themselves claimed that the election was not a referendum on the President."
- New York Times correspondent Michael Cooper in a November 5 "Political Memo" headlined, "Debunking the Myths of the Midterm."
Forget Civility: Obama Must "Fight" to "Get His Groove Back"
"There's gotta be some give. There's also gotta be some shove. The President is gonna decide where he is still gonna call Republicans out on where they're gonna make the tough choices and the tough votes. Because that's where he's gonna get his groove back."
- NBC's David Gregory on Today, November 4.
"He [President Obama] has to realize that Mitch McConnell has virtually said so that politically he wants to cut out his heart and throw his liver to the dogs. He has to be a fighter."
- Ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather on MSNBC's Jansing & Co. November 3. [Audio/video (0:30): Windows Media | MP3 audio]
Shame on Americans for Turning Their Backs on "The Anointed One"
"How could we resist a man who simply by opening his mouth could move mountains?...There are many explanations for why he seems diminished by the power of his own office, from the vestigial racism of the American public to his misreading of his own mandate....Of course, Obama has never turned his back on us, but so many Americans have turned their backs on him that it amounts to The Anointed One, as he is sometimes referred, being stripped of something that can never return: his anointment."
- From "Why President Obama Will Never Be Barack Obama Again," a November 4 Esquire magazine "The Politics Blog" post by Tom Junod.
What Happens When Tea Party Shuts Down Government?
Co-host Harry Smith: "So here's your question - last, but not least. It gets to be February, all is said and done, big Republican wave just rolls in there. There'll be a routine vote, for instance, to increase the debt ceiling and the Tea Party guys are going to say, 'Over my dead body,' and the government comes to a screeching halt. Then what happens?"
Author Ann Coulter: "Well, the media will blame the Republicans."
- CBS's The Early Show, November 2.
Real Problem: Obama's Policies Just Weren't Liberal Enough
"If the stimulus had been bigger and the financial reform package clearer and stronger, the public would have had a different - and, I believe, more positive - sense of the President's agenda."
- Time's Joe Klein writing in his magazine's "Swampland" blog, November 4.
Election Night Rudeness: Is Bachmann Hypnotized? Can Palin Even Read?
"Senator, do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President of the United States?...If she were on Jeopardy right now and the topic was national government, American government generally defined, would she look like an imbecile, or would she look okay? Does she know anything?...Have you ever been an eyewitness to her actually reading something? Have you seen her - no, I'm dead serious about this. Have you ever seen her reading words on a piece of paper? A newspaper, magazine, anything? Have you ever seen her read something?"
- Matthews to Alaska's Democratic Senator Mark Begich, November 2. [Audio/video (3:07): Windows Media | MP3 audio]
Chris Matthews: "Congresswoman Bachmann, are you hypnotized tonight? Has someone hypnotized you? Because no matter what I ask you, you give the same answer. Are you hypnotized? Has someone put you under a trance tonight? That you give me the same answer no matter what question I put to you?"
Rep. Michele Bachmann: "I think the American people are the ones that are finally speaking tonight. We're coming out of our trance....I think people are thrilled tonight. I imagine that thrill is probably maybe quite not so tingly on your leg anymore."
- From MSNBC's election night coverage, November 2.
Decrying Verdict of "Dumb," "Bastard," "Idiot" Voters
"Just once - probably never get reelected if you ever said it - I would like to hear somebody say, 'The voters have spoken, the bastards.' Or, 'The voters have spoken. What a bunch of idiots.' 'The voters have spoken. God, they're dumb. Dumb as hell.' I just wish I'd hear somebody say that, because I think that happens to be the case this particular midterm elections."
- Longtime CNN and MSNBC contributor Bill Press on his radio program, November 4. [MP3 audio (0:22)]
The Joy of Manhattan's Communists at Play
"If communists have a reputation for anything, it is seriousness. (And if you have seen old photos of Karl Marx, you know that he did not smile much.) But at the Brecht Forum, a community center on West Street where revolutionaries and radicals gather daily to ponder and to pontificate, they also play. (Smiles abound.)...[There is] the monthly Game Night, when regulars put down their copies of Das Kapital and immerse themselves in table tennis, foosball and a complicated Marxist version of Monopoly called, appropriately, Class Struggle. In a city known for cynicism, the Brecht, which survives on donations, is a surprisingly open and idealistic place."
- From New York Times reporter Channing Joseph's November 7 article, "Where Marxists Pontificate, And Play."
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
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