Beltway 8 Quotes & Sayings

In the 1970s, 'The Boys on the Bus' exposed how a clubby pack of male political reporters ruled the road to the White House and shaped the news. Four decades later, an outsider gal from Alaska has commandeered the 2012 media bus - and left Beltway journalism insiders eating her dust. — Michelle Malkin

the healthcare industry spends four times as much on lobbying as the number two Beltway spender, the much-feared military-industrial complex? — Steven Brill

Lexington, Kentucky looks like paradise. Acres of grass as green and tender as a golf course putting green surround hilltop mansions. New Circle Road--a beltway enveloping the city's heartland like a moat--attempts to separate the wealthy landowners from the encroaching strip centers and fast-food joins that are symbolic of the rest of the state .... Combining the traditional feelings of Southerners with the uniquely gorgeous landscape of the bluegrass, Lexingtonians consider themselves and their region the cream of the crop--not only of Kentucky, but also of the nation. — Sally Denton

In the first weeks of the Obama administration, 'bipartisanship' was the reigning buzzword, and when the Beltway thinks 'bipartisan,' it pictures President Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill putting aside their differences and forging a legislative partnership, a ruddy pair of genial patriarchs bonding over the Blarney Stone. — James Wolcott

Can policy be both wise and aggressively partisan? Ask any Republican worth his salt and the answer will be an unequivocal yes. Ask a Democrat of the respectable Beltway variety and he will twist himself into a pretzel denying it. — Thomas Frank

The spy boom has been a beautiful windfall for architects, construction companies, IT specialists, and above all defense contractors, enriching thousands of private companies and dozens of local economies hugging the Capital Beltway. — Rachel Maddow

Bloomberg is famously impatient with beltway politics and believes that to get anything done you need to work from the ground up. — Jeff Goodell

We mustn't assume that we are going to deinvent government solely from inside the Beltway or within one or two sessions of Congress. We will do it one step at a time, in one community at a time - at the local level and through local institutions like churches, nonprofit and volunteer organizations and families. — Jeb Bush

According to the three missed calls from her mother - who thought Madison had been kidnapped in the big, bad city and was now being held for an ungodly sum of money - the four text messages from her brother wondering if she knew how to navigate the beltway - because apparently little sisters couldn't drive - and the voice mail from her father warning there was a problem with the reservations, she was late for brunch. — J. Lynn

In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it. Elections — Matt Taibbi

Brothers and sisters: Now is not the time for thinking small, now is not the time for the same-old, same-old establishment politics and stale inside-the-Beltway ideas. — Bernie Sanders

John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich. — Matt Taibbi

Our generals talk a good game about taking care of their grunts, and the majority of our Beltway politicians bay with moralistic fervor about how they, too, support the troops. — David Hackworth

Conservatives sometimes catch a tremendous about of flak from inside the Beltway - and those groups can exert extreme pressure on those conservative members to try to get them to vote in ways that are opposite of their core fundamental beliefs and the promises that they made to their constituents back in their districts. — Jeff Landry

But having biologists outside the Beltway remained a problem for the adminisration. "They found they couldn't control us," Williams said ... "That sort of thing just drove them up the wall. They were so used to saying 'do this,' and we'll just go away and do it. Never ask questions. The biologists had good connections with the press and national environmental group. "So eventually they said, 'Okay we're going to send you guys out to the hinterlands.'" The Regan administration began to dismantle the Endangered Species Office in D.C. Biologists have been working from regional offices ever since. — Joe Roman

It is almost impossible for anyone outside this damn beltway to really understand how the Congress works. If you aren't here, walking the halls of Congress, sitting at bars and attending parties where you get to knock back some brews with Hill staffers, you don't have a handle on the almost numbing amount of bullshit that goes on. — Brock N. Meeks

Sami and I had exactly one day together in the old world. On Tuesday the jihadists came to our front door and knocked down our buildings. Our new world was hijacked planes, anthrax, and Afghanistan. Then we had snipers inside the Beltway. Then came Iraq. With every military action we were told reprisals were not just probable, but a foregone conclusion. An intelligence officer with a fancy PowerPoint briefed teachers on 'our new reality.' He called us 'targets.' He said 'get used to it.' He told our Webmaster 'get off your ass' and remove bus routes/stops from the school's website. Johnny Jihad would find that information especially helpful if he decided to plow through our kids one morning as they stood half-asleep waiting for the school bus. — Tucker Elliot

It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right, a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power. — Thomas Frank

Republicans also have to start to look at talent recruitment. Eight years ago Barack Obama was a no-name state senator. So I think we need to look outside the Beltway and start to look at a younger, more diverse pool of people and tap them to run for office instead of continuously tapping the same type of self-funder individual that Republicans seem to go after every time. — Andrea Tantaros

Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for. — Tom Clancy

What makes me uncomfortable about [Barack] Obama is what makes me uncomfortable about any young politician who has not yet been bloodied inside the Beltway. — Henry Rollins

Obama is very much an establishment sort of guy. The whole image of him as a transcendent figure was based on style rather than substance. If you actually looked at what he said, not how he said it, he said very establishment things. He's a moderate, cautious, ameliorative guy. He tends to gravitate toward Beltway conventional wisdom. — Paul Krugman

A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence . One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism . Those rules divide the world into Democrats & Republicans , liberals & conservatives , and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news , they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news. — Bill Moyers

There is a growing sense among Americans outside the Beltway that while President Obama may be a good talker, he is a lousy manager. — Kathleen Troia McFarland

The media is uncritical, and their so-called the concept of objectivity translates into keeping everything within the Beltway. However, Iraq was quite different. Here, there were flat-out lies, and they sort of knew it. They were desperately trying to make connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. — Noam Chomsky

The Beltway media went into caroming-off-the-walls hysterics over Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, whipping itself into a flaming casserole even as Clinton's standing with the American people remained upright and firm, so to speak. — James Wolcott

The Beltway is waking up to the realities of Prsident Obam's budget plan, which taxes, spends, and borrows as far as the eye can see. — Matthew Continetti

Since I am a loyal American, I am not supposed to tell you why this has taken place, but then it is not usual for us to examine why anything happens; we simply accuse others of motiveless malignity. "We are good," G.W. proclaims, "They are evil," which wraps that one up in a neat package. Later, Bush himself put, as it were, the bow on the package in an address to a joint session of Congress where he shared with them - as well as with the rest of us somewhere over the Beltway - his profound knowledge of Islam's wiles and ways: "They hate what they see right here in this Chamber." I suspect a million Americans nodded sadly in front of their TV sets. "Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." At this plangent moment what American's gorge did not rise like a Florida chad to the bait? — Gore Vidal

Life inside the Beltway bubble dulls your thinking. — Mark McKinnon

When I talk to people outside the beltway, I don't think people are that divided. — Tim Kaine