William Kristol quotes:

Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I'll predict that right now.

[removing Saddam] "would start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy

[Donald Trump] will try to renegotiate the trade deals a little bit.

[the war in Iraq] "could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East

Many of Bush's defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I'm perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics.

Leo Strauss's discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought.

I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [...] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.

[Donald ] Trump is more important than all of us. He's more important than the media.

Conservative policies have on the whole worked - insofar as any set of policies can be said to 'work' in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

Donald Trump beat Jeb Bush and beat Hillary Clinton. And when everyone thinks of Donald Trump that's pretty impressive.

Yuppies don't have loyalty. They have useful relationships and meaningful encounters.

If the American people really come to a settled belief that Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over.

Conservatives shouldn't count on the Supreme Court to do our work for us on Obamacare. The Court may rule as it should, and strike down the mandate. But it may not. And even if it does, the future of health care in America - and for that matter, the future of limited government - depends ultimately on the verdict of the American people.

[Among conservatives] there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people'.... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons.... We...are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants.

There will be trying times during Obama's presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments.

American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

Bush is no conservative.

Conservatism as an "ism" is always going to be somewhat in tension with a political party.

Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower.

Actually, not because of anyone's intention but just because of some sociological and some other things that have happened over 25, 30 years, the parties have sorted themselves out much more ideologically, which has some benefits and some costs.

Fox gets two million viewers a night, and MSNBC gets one. It's four million people, five million people, and 130 million people are going to vote. There are an awful lot of voters, and an awful lot of politically engaged, intelligent people who are not hanging on whatever happens on Bill O'Reilly or Rachel Maddow.

Frankly, if you're 26 years old and there's a war on women or there's not a war on women, you can get all wrapped up in it and get lots of traffic on your website and get into exchanges and scream and yell about it on MSNBC or Fox, and a week later no one can remember what that was about.

[I]t's up to Republicans to expose the bureaucracies and criticize the orthodoxies - to ask why visas for travel to the United States are still being issued in West Africa and why American military forces are being deployed there without a workable plan or intelligible purpose, why CDC spending priorities are so skewed and CDC management so weak, and why here at home routine police powers aren't being used and routine public health measures aren't being implemented.

And on this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular.

At the end of the day,[Mitt] Romney was pro-life, but [Rick] Santorum was more fervently pro-life, and had been for longer. They're all going to repeal Obamacare, but Romney has once endorsed something like it. In the old days, there really were differences on fundamental issues, even on foreign policy, [for which] [Newt] Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum were pretty similar.

First of all, legally, it's hard to do these things[ get rid of ObamaCare]. Donald Trump needs a lot of competent people...

For all the talk about the bitterness and the partisanship in American politics, is it really that bitter and partisan? Think of American history. Think of Joseph McCarthy. Think of the New Left. Think of [George] McGovern. Think of [Ronald] Reagan. Think of George Wallace. We've had an awful lot of real extremism on both wings.

Going from three TV channels to broadcast TV to cable to talk radio; obviously the online explosion has changed things.

Have you ever met a war you didn't love?

He has a competent person, I think who will be confirmed as HHS secretary, Congressman Tom Price.

He should release the tax returns tomorrow. It's crazy. You've got to release six, eight, ten years back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two. He has to give a big speech in defense of capitalism, and that will elevate, I think, this race above this tactical back and forth, which I do think he's on the margin of losing.

I am on the whole a defender of the current, despite being a conservative. I mean, I think things are better than when I was younger.

I don't really believe that people read just the stuff they agree with.

I don't think [Mitt] Romney can sit there and wait to win because perhaps people are disappointed with President [Barack] Obama.

I don't think you want political parties that are entirely driven by some extremely doctrinal ideology.

I like [ Rick] Santorum personally and respect him, but you wouldn't say that he was really that strong of an opponent. At the end of the day it wasn't like [Ronald] Reagan running against [George] Bush, or [George W.] Bush against [John] McCain, even. It's sort of surprising that Romney had as much trouble as he did, and I think it shows a weakness in appeal to those voters.

I mean, obviously, one of the strongest arguments against evolution and selection of the fittest and progress, which is part of evolution, is the current field of the presidential candidates. We started off with Washington and Adams and Jefferson and then we had Lincoln, and now we moved ahead and look where we are now.

I personally - if I were designing the tax code - would have a tax code in which Mitt Romney paid more than 13 percent, given what I know about the kind of investments he made money from.

I still would say generally that more people have access [to] and take advantage of more diversity of opinion than was once .

I think [Donald Trump] will do something on immigration.

I think it's fine that there are five million people who are watching [politics on TV], and obviously I'm happy they are since they're on the air, and there are a couple hundred thousand people reading The Weekly Standard online, and that's great too, but most Americans aren't engaged that intensely, and are much less partisan.

I think reading intelligent expressions of different points of view is a good thing, and there is a way in which being in academia in a classroom at the University probably gives you, can give you an academic view of things, and reading actual real time debates about what should we do in Syria or the Buffett rule, budget issues...gives you a kind of sense that's hard to get in a classroom.

I think that's what's - one of the things that is alarming to me is [Donald] Trump, and I think Trump supporters seem to believe, he won, huge upset, full credit to him, and has got the wind at his back. And Republicans on The Hill do want him to succeed, obviously, and they're deferring to him more than they deep down in private sort of wish - want to, but they are going to defer to him publicly for awhile. But I think that is going to run out faster than people think.

I think the whole dynamic is different. Whereas in [Barack] Obama's case, even though there was no incumbent, he was able to run against eight years of Bush-Cheney and a Republican Congress, and everyone was tired of everything. He was able to benefit from that.

I think there was a moment in the middle part of the century into the 60s, 70s when at least elite journalism claimed to be non-partisan. You can go back and look at it and wonder about how non-partisan it was.

I was "Never Trump." But it turned out never republican was really the theme of this election.

If Donald Trump behaves well, personally, and morally - I agree with Van [Jones] on this - if he distances - if he disassociates himself from forces that he unfortunately coddled and even fostered a little in this campaign, if he is responsible about the way in which he goes about his policy, initiatives on immigration and ObamaCare, trade and other areas, he has a huge opportunity, because the truth is that a lot of this stuff isn't that - there is a lot that can be done...

If President [Barack] Obama - President [Donald] Trump shows up with a, you know, cleaver and just says, I can get rid of all these regulations, I can get rid of ObamaCare, no problem at all, then that would be a mistake.

If terror groups are to be defeated, it is national governments that will have to do so. In nations like India, governments will have to call on the patriotism of citizens to fight the terrorists. In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit.

If we free the people of Iraq, we will be respected in the Arab world... and I think we will be respected around the world.

If you look at the polls - the conservatives are fine.I think there will be a fair amount of enthusiasm, or at least motivation. They very much want to remove President [Barack] Obama.

If you look at the polls, for all the talk about immigration and even trade, ObamaCare was an extremely important issue for Trump voters in 2016.

I'm happy to have interns at The Weekly Standard and happy to have readers of The Weekly Standard, but if you all tell me that you were busy reading Plato and [Lev] Tolstoy and playing violin in the orchestra, I'd say that was great. I wouldn't tell you to take time out from that to get involved in political journalism.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

In any case, open-seat presidential elections like 2008 just are different in character from incumbent reelects, and I think that's the most important thing about this election - is that once there's an incumbent running for reelection, most of the debate is about, "Has he [Barack Obama] done a good job?" Most of the judgment is, "Do you want to keep him or do you want to replace him?" Now, the opponent has to also be acceptable and has to make his own case.

Iraq's always been very secular.

It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.

It's been an unusual election [2016].

I've always rebelled a little when people say, 'My Jewish values lead me to really care about the poor.' I know some Christians who care about the poor, too.

Lest conservatives be too proud, it's worth recalling that conservatism's rise was decisively enabled by liberalism's weakness.

Look, at actual Republican and conservative think-tank proposals to replace ObamaCare all have the pre-existing condition provision in, done somewhat differently from [Barack] President Obama's.

Maybe one thing that has happened is that the claims of non-partisanship of the mainstream media have been a little bit exploded. Mostly I'd say what, if anything has caused the change, are just the obvious technological changes - proliferation of easier access to getting your opinions out and the proliferation of media.

My sense from talking to college students is that you have a healthier sense of the diversity of opinions or arguments or analysis about issues. In our day it was just sort of, "Well gee, this is what the news says so that's the way it is." It didn't really get challenged that much.

Obviously I think politics is interesting and important and educational.

Of course there are different forms of conservatism. I would say just analytically that the Republican Party is more thoroughly conservative and the Democratic Party is more thoroughly liberal today than has been the case for most of modern history.

Patriotism is an indispensable weapon in the defense of civilization against barbarism.

People read the Tribune or the Sun-Times, you know, way back when the Tribune was a right-wing paper.It's always been somewhat that way. We take 10, 20 years in the 50s and 60s as kind of the norm, when there was this sort of bi-partisan parent consensus.

People used to complain in the 50s and 60s and even in the 70s when I was in school, studying political science, that "if only we could have two political parties that presented a choice, but there were all these liberal Republicans and there were all these southern Democrats who are conservative so people just don't have a clear choice."

Political parties are complicated coalitions and aren't excessively theoretical.

Recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don't pay income taxes are Romney supporters - especially of course seniors (who might well 'believe they are entitled to heath care,' a position Romney agrees with), as well as many lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country even if they're not getting a tax cut under the Romney plan. So Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him.

Republican Congressmen and senators will be in a very interesting place, where they have to support the president-elect - president - what will be President [Donald] Trump when they - when they agree with him, try to guide him in certain ways, I think oppose him on some things.

Republicans can also point to an alternate path. They can draw upon genuine experts to explain what should be done.

Romney has to convince the American public that they need to do something they're not usually inclined to do - replace a sitting president with a challenger. And unlike in 1980 and 1992, when the public was persuaded to do just that, the incumbent president has not been weakened by a primary opponent.

Shouldn't Democrats insist that Sen. Durbin step down as their whip, the number two man in their leadership?

Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not - and more often than liberals - about most of the important issues of the day.

Some journalists just get too wrapped up in daily news cycles and tempests in a teapot that are not going to make any difference. As someone who is older and has been through a few election cycles, maybe this is just being an old fogey, but I think I know what's going to really matter and what's not.

Tax credits instead of a huge bureaucracy. This is the question for me.

That's always been the case in America; there's been a big spectrum in how much people are interested in American politics.

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.

The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.

The media claimed to be non-partisan, centrist. It's not been that way for a lot of history.

The most devastating indictment of the president's proposal is that it threatens to destroy virtually everything about American health care that's worth preserving. Under the plan's layers of regulation and oversight, even seeing a doctor whenever you like will be no easy matter: access to physicians will be carefully regulated by gatekeepers; referrals to specialists will be strongly discouraged; second opinions will be almost unheard of; and the availability of new drugs will be limited.

The ObamaCare premiums, the numbers started moving away from Hillary Clinton he moment there was a problem with.

The repealing and replacing of Obamacare is very complicated. It is what a White House and congressional leadership, serious White House and serious congressional leadership, should meet on and work on and figure out a strategy of, and it may work and it may not. Obviously not every administration gets things through, even when they have much larger majorities in congress and a much larger popular vote than Donald Trump had.

The trouble with politics and political coverage today is that there's too much liberal bias.... There's too much tilt toward the left-wing agenda. Too much apology for liberal policy failures. Too much pandering to liberal candidates and causes.

There are a few things [Donald Trump] has been pretty clear he'll do. A big infrastructure program that he'll get bipartisan support for.

There's a sort of romanticizing of the past. When you actually think about the past, you know it's a little different.

These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.

What's more important than the media, there's this thing called ObamaCare, which was President Obama's signature domestic achievement. It won Republicans the House in 2014 - 2010. It won Republicans the Senate in 2014.

Whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children I tend to think it's a good idea.

While a defeat for Obamacare in the Court would be nice, the defeat of President Obama at the polls on November 6 is crucial. If electoral victory is achieved, Obamacare can and will be repealed - and more judges of a constitutionalist persuasion will be appointed by the next president.

White women are a problem, that's, you know - we all live with that.

You all would be really shocked, if you were dropped back down into when I went to college, by the narrowness of the opinions you could get just by reading newspapers and magazines and watching TV.