Quotes & Sayings About The 2012 Election

The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days. — Juan Williams

Corporations are people my friend — Mitt Romney

Because of racism, he can't govern effectively' is not a great argument for re-election. — James Taranto

President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you're a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn't work too badly, I'll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election. — Timothy Noah

Despite the fact that he has run the most incompetent administration in history, President Obama remains a solid bet for re-election in 2012. Obama's frontrunner status springs from two crucial facts: first, by overexposing himself in the public eye, he has made himself larger than life; second, the Republican field is pathetically weak. — Ben Shapiro

Obama will win the 2012 election, thanks in part to the tech community rallying behind him due to issues like SOPA, visas, and free speech. — John Battelle

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012. — Steven Rattner

Forgot to live-tweet the election last night, so I'm post-tweeting today. I'll start as soon as my fingers unclench from their rage fists. — Stephen Colbert

Presidential election results in 2008 and 2012 clarified that talk radio was not, in fact, running the country. — Timothy Noah

I campaigned in 2012 all over this country for months: 'Repeal and replace Obamacare.' That was not the mandate of the voters. If they wanted to repeal Obamacare, the 2012 election would have been probably significantly different. — John McCain

The middle class of America must pay some federal income taxes or this will no longer be America. — Frank Coyle

In 2012, the far-right Golden Dawn won 21 seats in Greece's parliamentary election, the right-wing Jobbik gained ground in my native Hungary, and the National Front's Marine Le Pen received strong backing in France's presidential election. Growing support for similar forces across Europe points to an inescapable conclusion: the continent's prolonged financial crisis is creating a crisis of values that is now threatening the European Union itself. — George Soros

The Republicans' plan is that if they can't buy the 2012 election they will steal it. — Elizabeth Drew

It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972, the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama, who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters. — Jon Meacham

[O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn't much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate's mood. — George Packer

The Tea Party definitely scored a significant victory with Senator Cruz's election in 2012 and scored victories in some statewide primaries. But to me, as the Tea Party gets stronger within the Republican Party in Texas, the prospect of a blue Texas becomes stronger and stronger. — Julian Castro

In the 2012 election, Obamacare, as it's called, and I'll be more polite - the ACA ... was a major issue in the campaign. I campaigned all over America for two months, everywhere I could. And in every single campaign rally I said, 'We have to repeal and replace Obamacare.' Well, the people spoke. They spoke, much to my dismay, but they spoke. And they reelected the President of the United States. — John McCain

The PP has spent 3 years thinking about the election (in 2008), but I think that one has to give them some advice: to prepare themselves to carry on thinking, but about the election in 2012. — Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

I will barnstorm American living rooms. Mainstream media will be unable to ignore me, but more importantly they will be unable to overlook the needs of average Americans in the run-up to the 2012 election. — Roseanne Barr

The potential for manipulation here is enormous. Here's one example. During the 2012 election, Facebook users had the opportunity to post an "I Voted" icon, much like the real stickers many of us get at polling places after voting. There is a documented bandwagon effect with respect to voting; you are more likely to vote if you believe your friends are voting, too. This manipulation had the effect of increasing voter turnout 0.4% nationwide. So far, so good. But now imagine if Facebook manipulated the visibility of the "I Voted" icon on the basis of either party affiliation or some decent proxy of it: ZIP code of residence, blogs linked to, URLs liked, and so on. It didn't, but if it had, it would have had the effect of increasing voter turnout in one direction. It would be hard to detect, and it wouldn't even be illegal. Facebook could easily tilt a close election by selectively manipulating what posts its users see. Google might do something similar with its search results. — Bruce Schneier

Republicans believed that their job was not governing but blocking any idea coming from President Obama and the Democrats, and wiping out Democrats in the 2012 election. — Juan Williams

New racial minorities now constitute a fresh and welcome presence in the suburbs and slow-growing rural areas as well as in big cities. They are a much-needed tonic for a labor force that would otherwise be starting to shrink. Furthermore, they will serve as a necessary conduit to other nations in today's increasingly globalized economy. The political clout of racial minorities, both new and old, was demonstrated in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, and diversity within the electorate continues to increase more rapidly than most political strategists could have anticipated only a couple of election cycles ago. — William H. Frey

In 2012, President Barack Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, who didn't have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. It was the usual bargain for J. Karacehennem and other people of the Loony Left. You supported a person whose policies you agreed with, sort of, but who you felt was too beholden to corporate interests and whose foreign policy made you sick. If you didn't support this person, the alternative was something even worse. Voting was little more than triage. — Jarett Kobek

If you care about the 2012 election and value the voices of regular Americans who lost hope in their hope and change candidate, this is one documentary you won't want to miss. — Jedediah Bila

For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election. — Glenn Greenwald

I have a lot of reason to believe, as we saw in the 2012 election, most Americans don't agree with the extremists on any side of an issue, but there needs to continue to be an effort to find common ground, or even take it to higher ground on behalf of the future. — Hillary Clinton

Supporting the definition of marriage as one man and one woman is not anti-gay: it is pro-traditional marriage. And if support for traditional marriage is bigotry, then Barack Obama was a bigot until just before the 2012 election. — Marco Rubio