Political Quotes

“Colleagues, it has been a terrible day for everybody here and for our country. One of the things I was thinking about today is something I often think about when I am on this floor, which is that the Founders of this country, the people who wrote our Constitution, actually knew our history better than we know our history. I was thinking about that history today, as we saw the mob riot in Washington, DC--thinking about what the Founders were thinking about when they wrote our Constitution, which was what happened to the Roman Republic when armed gangs, doing the work for politicians, prevented Rome from casting their ballots for consuls, for praetors, for senators. These were the officers in Rome, and these armed gangs ran through the streets of Rome, keeping elections from being started, keeping elections from ever being called. In the end, because of that, the Roman Republic fell, and a dictator took its place, and that was the end of the Roman Republic--or any republic, for that matter--until this beautiful Constitution was written in the United States of America. So it is my fervent hope that the way we respond to this today, my dear colleagues, is that we give the biggest bipartisan vote we can in support of our democracy and in support of our Constitution and in rejection of what we saw today and what the Roman Republic saw in its own time.…”