Party Shift Quotes

Because, Bill, I think we’ve given the South away to the Republican party for as long as anyone can foresee.

We just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.

As someone who has spent much of my life identifying as a conservative, I can't stand what American conservatism has become.

The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party.

If the party of Lincoln wishes to become the party of intolerance, selecting Trump to be its presidential candidate is a good way forward.

There are few things more amusing in the world of politics than watching moderate Republicans charging to the right in pursuit of greater glory.

I grew up in a Texas where people would say, 'I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.' Now, the reverse is happening. People are leaving the Republican Party because the Republican Party is going too far to the right in Texas. And that's a source of great potential support for Democrats.

The Republican Party started with Lincoln as the party of civil rights. And the Democrats started with Jefferson as the party that did not believe in big government. If Lincoln and Jefferson came back now, they wouldn't know which party to vote for. Jefferson might start another revolution; Lincoln might secede.

There was once in this country a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, supposed to be a Democrat—a man whose principles and policies are not very prevalent among Democrats today.

I didn't leave the Republican Party. It left me.

The old Republican Party is gone. It's now Trump's party.

Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.

In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites.

Historically, tobacco control was not a partisan issue in American politics. Neither major party favored it. Republicans were sympathetic to corporate interests and Democrats were dominant in states where tobacco was grown and manufactured. However, beginning in the late 1960s Republicans began replacing Democrats in the South … and that liberated the Democrats to be the party of tobacco opposition.

This is not even Bill Clinton's Democrat Party, anymore. This party, the Democrat Party of today, is so off the rails and so radical that Christians and Catholics are leaving the Democrat Party.

Once upon a time, it was the Democrats who claimed to be the party of the working man. No longer. They abandoned the working guy. They slammed the door in their face, and now, it's President Trump and the new Republican Party that is supporting working Americans, blue-collar workers.

I really do put it on Bill Clinton's presidency as the time when the Democrats became the party of the college degree as the key to success in life.

Yes, President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, but a hundred years later, the Republican Party wasn't Lincoln's. Richard Nixon became president by courting Americans upset by integration, intentionally fueling the racial divide.

I'm choosing not to accept the Trumpification of the GOP as an irreversible fact.

The great unknown in this country is where this leaves the Republican Party after this election. Will it be the party of the Kochs or will it be the party of [Donald] Trump?

The Negro has not only come into the Democratic Party, but the Negro has come into control of the Democratic Party.

I would argue that there's been a backlash this year [2016]. They [the Kochs] pushed the [Republican] party too far right. The other thing that the backlash is against is the sense that politicians have been bought and sold.

I see some parallels between then [Lincoln's era] and now. Certainly the division of ideologies between two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In 1865, the Democrats were the Conservatives and the Republicans were the progressives, and today it's just the opposite.

Apparently there are some Democratic leaders in the Senate that are running for office who now believe in tax cuts.

Veterans have had a long record of leaning towards the Republican Party. I think that's changing. I think that President Obama has the strongest record with veterans among any president in my lifetime.