5 Quotes by Mike Lofgren

A politician is a hog grateful to whoever is rattling the stick inside the swill bucket. It is time to take the swill bucket away. p 270

The contemporary populist Right is a bastard child of corporate America, which has subsidized the Tea Party via front groups like American for Prosperity and the Club for Growth ever since the movement's beginning on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Its real, as opposed to stated, purpose was to distract and channel the inchoate popular longing for a change in the status quo... p 234

The pressure to conform to an authority figure or peer group can cause people to behave in shocking ways.

We must let our hopes be greater than our fears.

The GOP’s thirst for confrontation and crisis is symptomatic of a destructive and nihilistic streak that has overtaken our political system. When one party repudiates the whole concept of compromise, it is inevitable that the government will lurch from one crisis to another.