Matthew Dowd: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's gone from a principled conserva...

You can't keep changing the rules based upon who holds political power.

Matthew Dowd

political-power political

What Donald Trump is, is not movement of change, it's a reaction to global change, it's a total reaction to global change. It's transformational change in the world done by transportation, technology and all that. And people, most of Donald Trump's voters want to go back.

Matthew Dowd

technology want people

This is an issue that has an exceedingly high number of threads in it. It involves race, it involves culture, it involves crime, it involves justice.

Matthew Dowd

issues race numbers

If Hillary Clinton wins the race, she will win it with the most diverse coalition that anybody's ever been elected by in presidential history.

Matthew Dowd

presidential clinton winning

The president [George W. Bush] broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter.

Matthew Dowd

unions broken president

As the inevitable discussion proceeds in the months ahead, this memo should provide both perspective and a reality check. President Bush's approval numbers will again fall back to more realistic levels fairly quickly. All were quite successful on Election Day.

Matthew Dowd

successful reality fall

Washington always has a high level of hypocrisy, right, but I think the level of hypocrisy that has come out of the United States Senate on both sides of the aisle is amazing.

Matthew Dowd

united-states hypocrisy thinking

As you know, in this democracy, in order to have a healthy democracy, we have to get to the common good. But the only way to get to the common good is if we have a common set of facts, which we don't seem to have today, and we have a common level of decency. And my problem with the president and what happened today and why I think it affects the country as a whole is, first, we bring up our kids better than this. We teach them not to do this. We tell them not to do this, and it is not the right standard of behavior.

Matthew Dowd

country kids thinking

If you give up freedom to get security, you deserve neither.

Matthew Dowd

security giving-up ifs

To me, polls are like approval ratings for presidents are like an offensive line, right. And if an offensive line is weak, that means the defense is empowered and emboldened.

Matthew Dowd

approval-rating president mean

The highest form of patriotism is dissent.

Matthew Dowd

patriotic form political

Well, Americans expect our president to be human beings, and as imperfect as all of us are. They expect us to make mistakes and all that. But one thing the American public likes is, if you make a mistake, you do that, you cross that line that they expect you to behave under, then you apologize or then you correct that behavior and said you have learned, you are going to do better, you are going to achieve better, and you are going to serve a higher purpose than that.

Matthew Dowd

purpose president mistake

I may be a little old-fashioned, but I actually believe that if you live and work in our house and you work on our payroll and you take oaths, then integrity matters in elections.

Matthew Dowd

house integrity believe

What makes America great is peaceful protests and exercising your constitutional rights.

Matthew Dowd

rights exercise america

Democrats have a problem if they go one way and don't emphasize the rule of law and only have compassion. The Republicans have a problem if they only go with the rule of law. There has to be a balance.

Matthew Dowd

balance compassion law

Let's keep in mind that Donald Trump didn't win because of himself. He won in spite of himself. A quarter of his voters voted for Donald Trump believing he wasn't presidential and he didn't have the temperament, but they had hope that he would grow into the office and become more presidential. That doesn't seem to have happened, and I don't think it will happen for a 71-year-old man.

Matthew Dowd

winning men believe

If he didn't have all his flaws, and could grow as a candidate, and had run a real campaign, he would be walking away with this.

Matthew Dowd

politics

He begins to run the table, only way I see a real path for the establishment to stop Donald Trump is if Donald Trump loses Iowa. And I see no path for Cruz unless Cruz wins Iowa.

Matthew Dowd

politics

Whoever the establishment person is needs to emerge.

Matthew Dowd

top-news

I think this most recent conclusion by CPS validates our position all along that the Meitivs were never responsible for any form of child neglect and there was no basis to investigate the family or detain the children.

Matthew Dowd

living

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's gone from a principled conservative traditional Sun Belt Republican to somebody that's trying to out-DeSantis Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to be going out of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis way to out-Trump Trump.