David Frum Quotes

Just a few months ago in the Republican primary Mitt Romney said to his opponents, who he was crushing at the time, stop whining. And I think that's a good message for the Romney campaign. Instead of whining about what the Obama campaign is saying, why don't you just put the facts out there and let people decide rather than trying to hide them.

During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.

I happen to think it's the politics that makes you electable, but the reason for that is politicians sometimes talk about electability as if it's just a matter of conning the public. Actually, it's a matter of persuading the public, and in my experience, usually, the public gets it right.

If Romney would go ideological in explaining Obama, it would help. We gotta stop the, 'He's a nice guy' stuff. Nice guys don't do what Obama is doing. Nice guys don't say and do and act the way Obama is saying, doing, and acting.

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.

A lot of our Democratic consultants have fallen into the self-defeating prescription that the candidate that runs the most negative ads wins. I have a new theory: Positive is the new negative.

According to the people who dearly would love to throw him out of office, Barack Obama was elected to be 'above politics.' He wasn't elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude.

If you can't be a populist in Arkansas, you ain't going to be a populist in Washington.

I think that what most surprises anybody who goes into politics from even a modestly cerebral background is the vulgarity of much of the cut and thrust of politics.

Politicians always criticize each other in different ways.

Memo to White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy.

The thing that Tea Parties have to understand, you can't govern if you don't get elected.

President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you're a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn't work too badly, I'll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election.

The Romney candidacy is better than it was four years ago, but it's not clear that it's good. Mitt needs to get good real fast: A real speech, real plan, real responses, and real fire in the belly.

But I think what happened was that Clinton knew how to fight back. And the way he fought back was on the issues - being tough in staying on the things that mattered to people in their lives.

Governor Romney is a good debater.

Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse, which reached a low during the dispiriting presidential campaign of 1988. Then, more than ever before, negative argument displaced reasoned discussion about how a nation might best be governed. The sound bite reigned. Attack commercials flourished. The signs this year aren't any better. Evidence that negative campaigning can come back to sink the sender has had little impact. The races for governor in California and Texas have already seen the same slash and burn. No doubt the proceedings will grow more rabid still as November nears. Negative discourse serves democracy poorly. The temptation to avoid serious debate is already great. It increases as the stakes soar and slander becomes a rewarding, easy option. The issues of the day go untended. The whole affair takes on the character of the gladiator's art. The GOPAC glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence—the Republican whip in the House—and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document. The nakedness of the GOPAC offering also makes it useful. There must be limits to the negative politics that voters will bear; the bald appeal to invective will certainly probe those limits. For now, it should be said that some adjectives in the glossary aptly describe the glossary itself: shallow, sensationalist, and, yes, shame(ful).

I have never run a negative political ad in my life.

Politicians who are not good counter-punchers usually become punching bags.

The election campaign is no time to get involved in very, very serious issues.

In something as important as an election, a little name-calling sometimes breaks out.

I don't think politics has gotten too negative. I ... believe in going after the opposition on the issues.

The First Law of Politics: Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

Anybody who says negative commercials are wrong and shouldn't be used doesn't know anything about politics. The fact is people respond to those commercials.