I've knocked out any number of Democrats using ads associating them with the brand toxicity of Reid, Pelosi, and Obama, and before that Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, and others.

Democrats are holistically bad at politics. They don't know how to fight in the way Republicans do.

Trump 'accomplishments' are ephemeral, coincidental and accidental.

Almost every culture has a cognitive bias for the tough guy, the alpha, the winner.

Donald Trump's racism is of course an ongoing feature, not a bug.

I was born in Florida. My first political campaign was as a field director for George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988.

It's not a secret that Ted Cruz isn't my first choice for the Republican nomination for president. His smug Poindexter affect, his smarm, sanctimony, and general derpiness all grate on me. There's no doubt he's smart, but while smart is necessary, it's not necessarily sufficient.

In 1974, Democrats gained 49 House seats and four Senate seats. It wasn't just the Watergate scandal that drove Democratic wins, but the sense that Republicans had defended corruption and criminality in the White House.

I said Donald Trump could never be elected, confidently fueled by the empirical data of professional polling, a certainty in the vital necessity of field operations, and the knowledge his own campaign team (even on the night of the election) was ratting out the shambolic train wreck his campaign had been. I was wrong.

No bully - and Trump is the apotheosis of every bully, ever - is ever satisfied with just one day's worth of your lunch money.

Barack Obama basically ran as a liberal suburban Republican.

In a depressing twist, many members of my party and ideological persuasion have become advocates for Donald Trump on a scale that ranges from grudging to toadying, for a simple reason that seems to overwhelm all other factors: He attacks the media. Many are willing to forgive almost any sin because of it.

There are no points for civility or decency when it comes to prosecuting the campaign against Donald Trump.

When the 2010 election swept Republicans into office in a massive tidal wave, they were part of a philosophical and ideological change. They were bound by a set of limited-government principles. To be sure, sometimes loosely and imperfectly so, but the Tea Party wave was driven by ideas, not a singular, authoritarian personality.

What really hits Trump is when you prove to people that Trump isn't for you - that Trump is about Trump.

Clintons lie with facility, intent, and design.

Disasters happen. Nature refuses to cooperate with the best-laid plans of kings and lesser men alike.

Long sentence or short, everything Trump touches dies - even his most loyal henchman.

Donald Trump's campaign is good at two things; hoovering up hundreds of millions of dollars from MAGA fans and spending them to move his poll numbers... nowhere.

The first two weeks of Donald Trump's Presidency made it clear: Trump's Gonna Trump. No newfound dignity for him.

As consequential and as deadly as the coronavirus pandemic has been, and will continue to be, the Trump media machine can't stop and won't stop its relentless propagandizing and historical revision. Trump is the hero.

Trump's 2016 effort could afford to be a shambolic circus; nothing was on the line. He never expected to win and so the rotating cast of campaign managers didn't really matter.

If Trump claimed something was the most luxurious, it was likely a dank, low-end casino in Atlantic City.

We should tell the honest, painful stories of 9/11 because it dishonors the memory of heroes to invent a phony cast of villains when the actual terrorists were terrible enough to tear open this nation's heart.

Trump fans convinced of his strategic genius are welcome to their view, but they're wrong.

No bully ever turns down a free shot when his posse pins back your arms.

If you think Barr's Justice Department will take a single step to confront Trump or his cronies with any kind of challenge, think again. His hyper-maximalist vision of executive power borders on the fetishistic.

Trump's inability to relate actions to consequences, his profound intellectual ambivalence about history, strategy and facts, in addition to his notoriously delicate ego, combine to create a risk we've never seen in a President during a nuclear crisis.

With every product, the delta between the brand and the reality determines its power over the minds of consumers, and with Trump, that delta is always broad. If Trump said it was the best, it was average. If he said something was the finest, it typically included a spray-painted gold veneer.

I think Trump is so dangerous because the people that he appeals to the most have this sense of despair and oppression that has become a central defining characteristic of their lives. And they feel like only he is their avatar; only he will fight for them; only he will keep the wolf from the proverbial door.

Free-market capitalism doesn't pick economic winners and losers based on the president's economic nostalgia, and limited-government conservatism isn't marked a top-down ideological conformity strictly enforced by state media organs.

McConnell is the most talented majority leader in a generation. He has complete control of his caucus and understands and exploits their weaknesses, ambitions, and desires. In an impeachment trial where his members knew Trump's guilt was absolute and unequivocal, he bribed and browbeat them into submission.

Trump devotees don't care about shrinking the size and scope of government. They don't care about the Constitution. They're not Republicans, except as a flag of convenience.

If there's one thing no one will ever mistake Ted Cruz for, it's a charismatic cult leader. Cruz scans more as the accountant for the charismatic cult leader than the guy ladling out the Kool Aid.

I believed that the donor class would cringe at the vast threat Donald Trump poses to the entire Republican Party, its brand, its prospects for expansion, and the nation.

I will not vote for Hillary, and I will not vote for Trump. At the end of the day, I believe that President Clinton would be less damaging to the Republican Party than President Trump. Because five minutes after she's elected president, every bit of this anxiety in our party disappears instantly. We will go at the main enemy as we do.

I'm not a squishy liberal Republican.

Stay away from national polls. They are always an illusion. They will always trick you into stupid political behavior.

The delta between who I am on Twitter and in real life is zero.

We were a family of incredible talkers, readers, arguers.

I'm going to keep correcting people, sometimes harshly, on the disparity between conservativism and Trumpism.

I'm of the philosophy that you wage a campaign of full engagement and you use every tool in the toolbox.

I'm not afraid of what people say about me. I don't care if people say, 'You're an awful person.'

I always advise my candidates, 'You better fight to the last bullet.'

I think that Republicans are going to deeply, fundamentally, and profoundly regret the way that they have - the way Trump has - framed the party with Hispanics.

Even as an empiricist, I have to say that I believe in luck. I've seen it too many times in politics to let it pass by unnoticed.

Trump would rather submerge himself in the lake of fire for a thousand years than talk about Russia again. It's the subject he can never avoid, never fully wash out.

It's not that I mind fighting with Trump's cheer squad... it's that it's so rarely a fair fight.

Even the most liberal reporters I know have a sense of drive and curiosity about what the Clintons are hiding, because they know it's always something.

Trump sees himself as the center of the media universe, the sun to which all eyes turn.