159 Quotes by Rick Perlstein

One thing Republicans understand: In American elections, you have to choose from among only two people - not between the perfect and the good.

Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.

Political scientists have long argued that party identification is the best possible predictor of voting behavior and is remarkably sticky over time.

Social conservatism, business conservatism: the one side constitutes the other, like some infernal Mobius strip.

There's no question that Kennedy was an utter failure as a passer of laws during his proverbial thousand days.

What is considered 'conservative' and what is considered 'liberal' changes in any given era.

When you're a writer, you never know which of your pieces are going to gain a toehold and which will not, and it's best not to care too much.

America was founded on the fissure between slave states and free states, so these huge fault lines are just built into the American project. How we repress them, express them, deal with them, talk around them, think through them, don't think through them, is fascinating to me.

Over fifteen years of studying the American Right professionally - especially in their communications with each other, in their own memos and media since the 1950s - I have yet to find a truly novel development, a real innovation, in far-right 'thought.'