Category: Verbatim

If she had a political strategy in mind, I would think she would have an organized sequence of writings and thoughts to pass on. These appear to be more spur of the moment — reacting to issues of the day rather than embodying any broad political strategy.

— GOP fundraiser Fred Malek, quoted by CBS News, on Sarah Palin’s Facebook postings.

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

— Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, writing on her Facebook page Friday to promulgate the latest disinformation on the health-care debate.

I expect to be held responsible, but I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.

— President Obama, quoted by the Roanoke Times, at a fundraiser in Virginia.

You couldn’t sell this script in Hollywood… A pregnant woman leaves her home to go overseas to have a child — who there’s not a passport for — so is in cahoots with someone… to smuggle that child, that previously doesn’t exist on a government roll somewhere back into the country and has the amazing foresight to place birth announcements in the Hawaii newspapers?

— White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, quoted by ABC News , on polls that shows large numbers still question where President Obama was born.

I think that he is a good person, and good-intentioned. But I believe he didn’t serve in government long enough to understand really how things work … He really does not have an understanding of how Congress operates.

— Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), in a radio interview, on President Obama.

The votes you’re going to have to cast, whether it’s guns or whether it’s abortion or whether it’s any one of the hot-button items, finishes you as a national political leader in this country. You just can’t do it. It’s not possible.

— Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), quoted in “The Battle for America 2008,” advising then Sen. Barack Obama to run for president sooner rather than later.

I can tell you with absolutely honesty that when I sit around with my political friends … there’s very little or no discussion of Sarah Palin.

— White House adviser David Axelrod, interviewed on CNN.

In my choice of words, I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically.

— President Obama, trying to do a take-back in the Oval Office today for his “stupidly” remark during Wednesday night’s prime-time press conference in reference to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct at his home in Cambridge.

I’ve been trying to do the best I can on all fronts. This time carved out for Jenny and the boys is awfully important in a family situation to put the genie back in the bottle.

— South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, in response to a television reporter who caught him in the airport before leaving for yet another vacation (his fourth since his adulterous trip to Argentina).

I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world. That’s my observation.

— Vice President Biden, overheard in a Kiev pub earlier today.