Mark McKinnon Quotes

Conservative women in politics run a punishing gauntlet. They endure psychological evaluations and near-gynecological exams their male and liberal counterparts do not.

To pull off successful attacks in debates, you have to execute with nuance and subtlety. It has to be artful.

CEOs make hard decisions; sometimes, the least worst is the right one.

I'm no economist. I don't even play one on TV. I'm just a husband, a father, a taxpayer.

I'm amazed, as quirky, individual and selfish as most of us are, that anyone stays married for long.

My brother is one of my true heroes. Steady and sober where I am impulsive and emotional.

George W. Bush was president through some of the darkest days of our history and yet his optimism never waned. He is optimistic by nature, but he also understood the importance of always communicating a sense that things will get better.

Advocacy groups and voters are not wrong to push candidates to declare their position clearly on policy issues. That is good citizenship. Hard questions should be asked of every candidate, every politician. And those public servants should be prepared to answer, but in their own words.

Great presidents, and even those not so great, never complained about the hands they were dealt. Just the opposite. They assumed they were in the big chair to meet big challenges, no matter how difficult.

Negativity drove me out of politics in the mid-Nineties.

It's never popular among young people to be part of the establishment.

I met Barack Obama, I read his book, I like him a great deal. I disagree with him on very fundamental issues.

Limited government, low taxes, controlled spending and debt, and a restrained regulatory environment make Texas work.

Wages, investments, and home values are the three legs of the economic stool for most Americans.

Unfortunately, in American politics there are no standards for shame.

A competition of the best ideas - that should be what Congress is about.

As history has repeatedly proven, one trade tariff begets another, then another - until you've got a full-blown trade war. No one ever wins, and consumers always get screwed.

George W. Bush is not preoccupied with his legacy - nor with his popularity. He never has been. He has always led based on core conviction and strong principles and has believed that time and distance would allow for context.

The world is still changing. Faster than ever. And so should the Republican Party. Or condemn itself to a smaller and smaller base of core supporters and permanent minority status.

America glories in its tradition of the self-made individual. Political candidates compete to be a friend to entrepreneurs, and policymakers, imagining the next Microsoft or Google, design laws to back the innovator in the garage.

Marketers know - no matter how deep the emotional connection or brand loyalty - when a product does not perform, rational thought overtakes emotion, and most consumers make a new choice.

Weary of wily politicians who say one thing and do another, voters and advocacy groups insist presidential contenders commit to the cause du jour in writing, but candidates are foolish to comply. Words matter.

A troubled economy is always the sitting president's fault. It was when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, and when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by running against George W. Bush.

Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.

You know, Republicans should have a consistent philosophy. And if your philosophy is about limited government and not intruding in people's lives, you shouldn't just inconveniently take a social issue like gay marriage and say, 'Well, unless we think - actually we should be intruding your life.'

A Rick Santorum presidency would be very, very dangerous for America.

Technology has had more of an impact on the presidency and how the presidency communicates than anything.

Party switching has all the emotional edges and baggage of divorce.

When people see political ads, they think someone's lying to them.

America as we know it will end unless we end Medicare as we know it.

Mitt Romney is a businessman, a turnaround artist, a CEO. That is who he is. The former governor has experience in the public and private sector.

Politics at bottom is not all that complicated. It's all about timing.

Ah, political physics. Someone wins an election and, poof, they are a candidate for vice president. Ridiculous.

Life inside the Beltway bubble dulls your thinking.

As a Republican, I never expected to be working with Hillary Clinton.

Every day I am being told to sign up for Tumblr, Yammer, Friendfeed, Plaxo, Last.fm, ping.fm or the hot social-media tool du jour that happened to get mentioned on Mashable.com. It is like a social-media arms race. Each one of these new tools is like a cool new night club. Hot today, gone tomorrow, replaced with something else.

Wind and solar power are land-intensive, a green sin, but not energy-dense, and affordable only when heavily subsidized. And wind power must be supplemented with hydrocarbons for reliability.

I don't buy the argument that there can't be a successful independent candidacy for the presidency of the United States. People who say, 'It can't happen,' are many of the same people who said we'd never elect an African American.

The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.

The office of the president is the most powerful in the world. It is also, at times, the most powerless.

Public employees contribute real value for the benefit of all citizens. Public-union bosses collect real money from all taxpayers for the benefit of a few.

Now personally, I think the president should golf every day and never have a press conference. I want the leader of the free world to be as stress-free as possible. And if golf helps fade the psychic heat from the job, by all means tee it up often, Mr. President.

Consumers can choose from hundreds of channels today, including dozens for kids. At a time of dwindling resources, we don't need to be subsidizing PBS. It's time for Big Bird the mooch to compete with 'Dora the Explorer' and 'Bob the Builder.'

Sometime in the not too distant future, denying gays the right to marry will be viewed as historically corrupt - as corrupt as denying slaves their freedom.

I think Barack Obama is one of the most exciting politicians to come along in a long time.

Normally, when politicians talk about 'cutting the budget,' they really mean reducing the amount of increase. Actual spending goes up while the politicians claim to have 'cut the budget.'

Voters crave authenticity.

It doesn't matter if I go on CBS, PBS or Fox. Whoever is interviewing me is going to want to create some conflict in the story, or it's not interesting. That's just the way the news is.

It's much more powerful and compelling to create a positive vision than it is to tear somebody down.

There's only one way we're going to change our political climate and ensure we establish some respect in our discourse. And that is to show there is a real price to pay for being a disrespectful partisan idiot.