Bill Bennett really became an idol for me. I listened to him every morning from 6 to 9 for, oh, years.
Jonathan Krohn
In the book I define conservatism, as I believe it is fit upon four categories of principle: respect for The Constitution, respect for life, less government, and personal responsibility.
I listened to Bill Bennett and tons of other talk show hosts who talked about that and other policies and started branching out and caring about other issues in regards to politics.
The Democrats filibustered something in the Senate when I was eight years old. I don't remember what it was on and I didn't honestly care when I was eight years old. I cared about the history and the Senate rules.
Conservatism is not about the party, because the party is merely the shell. It is the inside - it's the filling that really means something.
I believe that this is the key, the principle itself is the key to conservatism. Because in many ways if you do not have a principled base you do not have policy and if you do not have policy in many ways you do not have an ideology.
In general President Obama's policies have been very, very skewed and very, very extreme. Like on healthcare for example, I don't think that trying to ram healthcare through was a smart idea politically, because he wasted a lot of capital and now he doesn't have any of that same capital with even his own party that he used to have.
I think that President Obama is beginning to realize that a lot of his plans have backfired.
I'd like to do policy and I'd like to do philosophy, I'd like to be able to get into the depth, into the meat of the argument - that's the kind of stuff I want to do.
In politics almost all of us are nerds, so that's just a given... but we're cool nerds.
The president hasn't come after me yet, but we've had other people come after me!
Now that I'm a political pundit, I have the ability to influence people.
Before I got into politics, I wanted to be a missionary to people in the Middle East. I thought it would be better to speak with them in their own language.
I have good voice inflection, that's why I'm good on radio. But on TV, I look too big because I move my hands around a lot.
I want the American people to understand that conservatism is an ideology of protecting the people and the people's rights.
I am an only child and home-schooled, so I have no siblings or classmates.
My mother taught me everything I know; how to speak properly, posture, enunciation.
As I've been acting since I was young it's taught me to give a good speech, and, though I say so myself, I did it pretty well.
I got into politics when I was eight years old.
My dad thinks Obama is a socialist and all these extreme views.
I don't think Obama's a socialist or evil, I just think he's wrong and I disagree with him, he's a leftist, that's what they are in France and in Great Britain and in Canada.
