When [Republicans] say they can reduce taxes and trim deficits at the same time, they are either deluded or deceptive, and they are playing voters for fools.

I think there are a lot of Americans who are very scared, scared that [Vladimir] Putin manipulated us, worried about Rex Tillerson, the winner of Russia's order of friendship as the secretary of state.

A nation that hates politics will not long survive as a democracy.

I actually think there are more Republicans than people realize who would be sympathetic to immigration reform in the rank and file. I think the lesson for Jeb Bush is politicians shouldn't write books with long lead times.

Here you had John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a very principled way standing up and defending Barack Obama. You had people like Gene Robinson and a lot of other liberals, who said, and this I personally agree with, however flawed Rand Paul was as a messenger, we need a debate about this. The administration has not been forthcoming enough about its drone policy.

What is working in the economy is a natural comeback plus some effects of the policies we've been following. But I'm sort of worried about the long term effects.

The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.