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1 " It was Bill Clinton who once pithily captured the contrast between the two parties when it came to selecting a presidential standard-bearer: "Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line. "
― Mark Halperin , Double Down: Game Change 2012
2 " One way of seeing all this was as a symptom of postmillennial decay, the degradation of public discourse, and the encroachment of celebrity worship into the arena of national affairs. Another way of looking at it was as an indication of the GOP's state of disarray. Then there was the way Trump perceived the thing: as a manifestation of his magnificence... "
3 " But Bachmann’s efforts to strut her IQ were undermined by gaffes galore. In New Hampshire, she hailed the state for being “where the shot was heard round the world in Lexington and Concord.” (That blast emanated from Massachusetts.) On June 27, the day of her official announcement in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, Bachmann proclaimed in a Fox News interview that “John Wayne was from Waterloo.” (Wayne was in fact from Winterset, Iowa; serial killer John Wayne Gacy was from Waterloo.) From now on, her son Lucas razzed his mother, “you can’t say George Washington was the first president unless we Google that shit first. "
4 " Heading into the race, the perception among political professionals and the press had been that the rival campaign squadrons were more or less evenly matched. But as the smoke cleared, a consensus quickly emerged that the Democrats had methodically been building an atomic clock while the Republicans were trifling with Tinkertoys. Chicago’s mockery of Boston was hushed but withering. "
5 " One voice can change a room. And if it can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world. "
6 " Standing in the shadow of the most prodigious political and fund-raising apparatus the Democratic Party had ever seen, [Biden] felt like a stranger to it, as if he'd walked into an opulent wedding where he knew no one. "
7 " The unwillingness of the rich guy to take advantage of being a rich guy for fear of looking like a rich guy was a chain of logic too Ouroborosian to ponder for too long. "
8 " Yet Romney’s swagger went only so far. When the paperback version of his book hit shelves that February, observers noted that one line from the hardback, about the success of Romneycare, had been expunged: the author’s hopeful boast that “we can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country. "
9 " We have nobody in Washington that sits back and says, ‘You’re not going to raise that fucking price!’” And the Chinese: “Listen, you motherfuckers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent! "
10 " You have to be willing to lose to win, and you’re going to lose a lot”—a lot of votes, a lot of states. “No one gets elected president without being humiliated. How you deal with the humiliation is the key. "
11 " With an icy stare, Obama set a trap: “Please proceed, Governor. "
12 " percent of Hispanics, he now stood at "
13 " ripe to hit the fairway. The famously competitive "
14 " Romney spent the next twenty-four hours with McCain, traipsing with him from Manchester to Peterborough to Salem, agog at his inability to complete three sentences without dropping an f-bomb. (Romney employed prim substitutes for profanities: “blooming” for “fucking,” “grunt” for “shit.”) "
15 " PULCHRITUDE "