Dick Morris Quotes

55 quotes in 857 categories

• The key to running a campaign on the cheap is to avoid spending money on anything other than projecting a message.
• Often GOP political strategy seems like the human wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm…
• The Darwinian adaptive trait of our time is the ability to figure out when we are being lied to on television.
• Rebut the negative, and the opposing campaign has not merely lost a skirmish, it has suffered almost irreparable damage. An effective rebuttal makes it hard…
• Spin is overrated. It is strategy, not spin, that wins elections.
• Today, a politician does not just need public support to win elections; he needs it to govern.
• The greater informational levels of the voters, their decreasing inhibitions in expressing disagreement, and their greater preference for Jeffersonian direct involvement, all make the need…
• The most basic decision a modern politician must make is whether to be aggressive or conciliatory.
• Leadership is a dynamic tension between where a politician thinks his country must go and where his voters want it to go.
• There is no substitute for a clear vision and a decisive direction.
• A politician can do what he thinks is right, he just has to be sophisticated in how he goes about it. Those who seek a…
• The opposing party rarely causes so much angst as does one's own.
• The key to controlling your own political party, so that it does not eat you alive, is to realize that while Democratic and Republican leaders…
• It is from the center that leaders must lead.
• Take whatever position you want, but do take a position, because once you do, ample money awaits you on either side.
• Every donation received is a potential negative ad. Vetting money is just as important as raising it.
• Despite romantic fantasies about caring candidates who learn of America in donut shops, most politicians rely on media to teach them what concerns the average…
• In fighting scandal, the key is not to overreact.
• The White House will run itself while the president is away. That's why he has to be sure not to be away too much.
• The typical presidential staff resents the vice-president even more than they do the first lady.

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