The Right Nation

“Throughout this book, we have tried to avoid using any of the jibes that are commonplace on both sides of the debate; after all, there is no shortage of people we can quote doing this. … If you have come to the book hoping to be told that George Bush is a moronic, oil-obsessed cowboy or that the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," then we hope that you paid for it before reaching this sentence.”

“A firm believer that "manners makyth man," [Prescott Bush] once took Joseph McCarthy to one side and lectured him for more than an hour on his boorish behaviour. … When McCarthy came to Connecticut to address a Republican meeting, Prescott recoiled at the rowdy crowd: "I never saw such a wild bunch of monkeys in any meeting I ever attended." At home he was such a stickler for standards that friends called him the "Ten Commandments Man."”

“George H. W. has always had a reputation of being "somewhat to the center of center". Many Texans mistook his East Coast politeness for wimpishness, dismissing him as a "clean-fingernails Republican" or, worse, "the sort of man who steps out of the shower to take a piss," as one of our colleagues was once told.”

“An Irish Catholic who grew up on a small farm in the Midwest and attended Marquette, a Catholic university in Milwaukee, where he liked to box, [Joseph] McCarthy personified populist resentment against the liberal elite. … "If you want to be against McCarthy, boys," he told a crowd of reporters, "you've got to be either a Communist or a cocksucker." No wonder Prescott Bush found it necessary to give him a lecture about manners.”

“[Barry] Goldwater cheerfully broke all the basic rules of politics. … One fan came up with a soft drink called "Gold Water—The Right Drink for the Conservative Taste." The candidate, with characteristic political sensitivity, promptly spat it out. "This tastes like piss!" he spluttered. "I wouldn't drink it with gin."”

“These days, American politics is a sport played between the center Right against the Right. From an international perspective, Democrats are now LINOs—Liberals in Name Only.”

“If Bush has divided opinion at home, he has united it abroad—pretty much all against him.”