* “Hillary Clinton’s optimal running mate might be Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a pro-labor populist whose selection would be balm for the bruised feeling of Bernie Sanders’ legions.”–George Will, Washington Post.
* “It’s going to be nasty, isn’t it? Put the small children away until November.”–David Axelrod, former Obama Administration spokesman, on the tenor of a Clinton-Trump match-up.
* “The extreme left now mirrors the extreme right, each reflecting the anger and unbending rigidity of the other. And the idea that politics is the art of compromise, where everybody gets something but nobody gets everything, seems a lost artifact from a distant age.”–Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald.
* “In November, I will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I will support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels.”–Jeb Bush.
* “The politician’s prior conduct is irrelevant if his present vows are in line with his target audience’s demands, and Trump dutifully obliged Republican primary voters with a socially conservative makeover. He was negative on abortion, grudging on gay marriage, gaga for Antonin Scalia. That was reassurance enough for them to focus on the America-first, anti-immigration, anti-establishment crux of his pitch and core of his appeal.”–Frank Bruni, New York Times.
* “If Trump is a great big middle finger aimed at a Republican establishment that has abandoned its principles, isn’t it curious that the party has chosen a man without any? Trump doesn’t even pretend to have any, conservative or otherwise. He lauds his own ‘flexibility.’ … He elevates unpredictability to a foreign policy doctrine.”–Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post.
* “Donald Trump won by being an outsider, so he should run an outsider candidacy. But can he run as an outsider without antagonizing or alienating all the insiders? If you alienate potential supporters, you make it almost impossible to get a majority.”–Ari Fleischer, former press secretary in the George W. Bush administration.
* “Hispanic voters represent such a big bloc of independent voters today, as well as swing voters and disaffected Republicans, that if we do our politics and messaging right and we get our voters out, we’ve got an opportunity to run up really historic numbers in South Florida because of the nature of Trump’s candidacy.”–Scott Arceneaux, Florida Democratic Party executive director.
* “Military intervention for reasons of ideology or nation building is not an Eisenhower or Nixon or Reagan tradition. It is not a Republican tradition. It is a Bush II-neocon deformity, an aberration that proved disastrous for the United States and the Middle East.”–Pat Buchanan, Creators Syndicate.
* “If Scott wants to be Trump’s VP or a U.S. senator, a more national mind-set might serve him better. Wouldn’t an international trade mission partnering with other governors be more productive–and patriotic–than the zero-sum game of poaching jobs from one state to another?”–Former Florida Republican legislator Paula Dockery.
* “The solution to transportation in this area is a regional approach. A regional plan that could be brought forward to the voters on both sides of the bay at the same time that shows that partnership, that shows that regional approach to this regional problem, and has common branding and … (a) marketing campaign paid for by the private sector, I think that’s the solution.”–Pinellas County Administrator Mark Woodard.
* “Anyone who is looking to do business in Cuba is effectively paralyzed unless you find the right folks in the Cuban government to push your proposal through. … They want U.S. companies to come to Cuba, rebuild their country and, for the most part, leave.”–Attorney Tim Hunt, in an Urban Land Institute-sponsored presentation to local business leaders.
* “The continued competition between the newspapers was threatening to both. There are very few cities that are able to sustain more than one daily newspaper, and the Tampa Bay region is not among them.”–Tampa Bay Times chairman and CEO Paul Tash.
* “Research proves the most critical school-based factor is the quality of the classroom teacher.”–James Cole, U.S. Department of Education deputy secretary