Mark McKinnon Quotations

Ronald Reagan was long thought to be the most conservative of Republicans. And by any standard today he is the most popular Republican in modern history. Yet he raised taxes 11 times, supported a ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks, and established amnesty for 3 million undocumented workers.

Obama killed Osama. Yes, President Barack Obama gets to crow about the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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

Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. We have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights.

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.

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

The problem with State of the Union speeches is that they are, by their nature and design, alphabet soup. It's hard to know what a president really cares about when they run down a laundry list and check every issue box under the sun for fear they will offend some constituency if they don't.

I think that the press has a duty and an obligation to report on local government, state government, federal government - to be aggressive, to do its job. And its job is to report on whatever it's covering.

America's commitment to religious freedom and tolerance should not be conditional.

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.

What strikes me when I leave Washington is the extent to which there's a huge disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country. The rest of the country is not hyper partisan.

Contrary to conventional military and game theory, the most effective offense is sometimes a direct attack against your political opponent's greatest strength - not his weaknesses - to place him immediately on the defensive.

I think the press are good people; I think they're educated people.

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.'

As a husband and as a father of girls, I cannot imagine any woman in my family making the sacrifice of sanity required to run for office. The limited reward for public service cannot blunt the cost.

It's just madness. First email. Then instant message. Then MySpace. Then Facebook. Then LinkedIn. Then Twitter. It's not enough anymore to 'Just do it.' Now we have to tell everyone we are doing it, when we are doing it, where we are doing it and why we are doing it.

Debates require a lot of hard work and preparation. If you try to wing it, it shows.

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.

I've slipped on occasion into the realm of irresponsible invective, but I try to avoid it and generally recant when I fall short. Because name-calling does nothing to improve understanding or move the political debate forward.

I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader.

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.

The No Child Left Behind Act will be one of President Bush's enduring legacies. And it was engineered and inaugurated with a truly bipartisan coalition in Congress. Accountability, standards, and truly measuring student performance just makes sense. The only real debate about the law was and is whether or not it was adequately funded.

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

Temporary tax cuts don't create permanent confidence, nor permanent jobs.

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.

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.

Technology and social media have brought power back to the people.

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

I don't claim any moral or ethical high ground, but I also have chosen not to run for public office. Shouldn't there be a higher standard of conduct for public officials?

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.'

I'm saying it loud: I'm a Republican who supports gay rights.

When elected officials and others contribute to a climate and culture that fosters hyper-partisanship, we've got to blow the whistle.

Mention the name George W. Bush in mixed company, and you're likely to spark a lot of debate and emotion - hot and cold, good and bad. Not a lot of neutral reaction. He was elected in the most controversial contest in American electoral history and governed during one of the most tumultuous decades.

As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum.

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

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

Presidents should do whatever possible and practical to encourage an environment of cooperation and bipartisanship. And they should maintain a certain level of decorum, diplomacy and decency. But, at the end of the day, presidents get elected to enact change.

Washington doesn't have just a spending problem, or just an entitlement problem, or just a taxing problem. We have a leadership problem. Fix that, and the first three problems are solved.

If you're a Democrat and 'The New York Times' is calling for your head, you know it's time for an exit strategy.

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

Democrats love to criticize Republicans on guns, but they are generally mute when it comes to taking on Hollywood or the gaming industry.

Republicans working in leadership and the trenches are largely old, white, male, out-of-touch, out of ideas, technology averse, and living in the past.

A few words about Sarah Palin: She is one of the most fascinating women I have ever met. She crackles with energy like a live electrical wire and on first meeting gets about three inches from your face.

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.

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.

Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Convention speeches are powerful tools to bend the curve of public opinion. George H. W. Bush's 1988 convention speech is a great example. His son's speech was also quite powerful.

Every president becomes a caricature. The press, partisans, late-night shows, and other arbiters of our culture these days boil down complicated and multi-faceted personalities into one-dimensional punchlines.

Presidential primary debates are an important part of our political process. But the media has wrested complete control from the parties and candidates over everything, including the number, the format, the qualifications, and the moderators. And they've become a circus.

The initial attraction of a political convention was that often the outcome was not preordained. There was at least some element of surprise. But, now it's like tuning in to a movie where you already know the plot and the ending. It's just not that interesting.

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.

If Democrats start consistently winning Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, the electoral outlook for Republicans in the future is mighty bleak.

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.

I don't really care how or why Obama got to the right place on gay marriage. I'm just glad he got there.

The Hippocratic Oath says do no harm. It's the Hypocritical Oath that says do no harm to one's political future.

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

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

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

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

Donors, like voters, increasingly expect candidates to exercise fiscal discipline.

I've spent the better part of my career in politics and public policy working on and fighting for education reforms.

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.

Running for president is hard. But it's good preparation. Because being president is a lot harder.

There's no question that many factors contribute to voters' perceptions about debates and who wins and who loses.

When you look at the money spent by labor unions for Democrats, it comes as no surprise the Democrats crafted a campaign-finance 'disclosure' bill with the thresholds adjusted to exempt unions.

Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world.

If we cannot come together to pause, to respect our dead and the heroic lives of meaning they led, then ours is truly a civilization lost.

Immigration is the most explosive issue I've seen in my political career.

Immigration reform almost happened under President George W. Bush. Twice. And it was comprehensive.

In politics, not all lies are all lies. And not all truths are complete.

Infrastructure spending does not create immediate jobs, and more than half of those jobs will pull from the pool of the already employed.

Middle America believes in fair play, an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail.

Mitt Romney is a nice guy. But, we know where nice guys finish in politics.

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

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

The Newtown massacre created a tipping point on the gun debate in America.

Twitter is not a business. I know its founders would like to think it is. It is, for the most part, a diversion.

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

Voters are looking for credibility and are wary of polish. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which candidate can more deftly read a teleprompter.

Special interests and opponents have figured out how easy it is to disrupt town halls and get their own message out. The days of the truly free-form town halls may be over.

I think the press has an interest in communicating to its viewers or readers, and their viewers or readers drive profit for those news organizations, so I think those news organizations have a certain bias toward their own readers. Yeah, I think they are a special interest. Of course they are.

I'll tell you, Liz Cheney is going to be a very good candidate. I worked with her during the Bush campaigns. She's smart, she's focused, she's disciplined - and she's got a great back story. She's got a large family. She's a great mom. And she's a hard worker. I think she's going to be a very effective campaigner.

To open up new markets and create American jobs, we need to make global bilateral free trade agreements a priority as they were under the Clinton administration.

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.

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.

Who the hell ever dreamed up a tie? It's just such a weird idea, and yet it has been literally hanging around forever as the one constant and boring men's fashion staple.

I took a lot of heat from Republicans when I stepped out of John McCain's campaign after the 2008 primaries. I still supported McCain, and voted for him, but I just didn't want to be the tip of the spear attacking Obama.

Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past.

Life inside the Beltway bubble dulls your thinking.

News is virtual now. It is not 24-hour news cycles; it is instant news cycles. It is live. News is live all the time, around the clock.

Marco Rubio is interesting because he checks so many boxes when you think about what a Republican nominee needs. He brings Florida, he's young, he's Hispanic, the Tea Party likes him. But that said, he's got issues, actually surprisingly, ironically, with Mexican-American voters.

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

I don't think that the press in 2004 was any more unfair to Bush than they were to Kerry.

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

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

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

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

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

For most of my life, I've considered myself a political centrist.

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