Political Quotes

“regarding the statement of my distinguished friend, my counterpart, the Republican leader, 90 percent of what he said is right on target. It is absolutely true that we need a process. That is why Senators Hatch and Specter have been working on this for several weeks prior to the resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor. The process is moving along very well. I acknowledge that the meetings I have had with the President on this matter have been very productive. They have been good and are pointed in the right direction. However, on a couple of things I disagree with my distinguished friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee; that is, we need to be very careful and put these problems we have had behind us, dealing with the so-called nuclear option. It is easy to throw words around like ``obstructionism,'' but the fact is the vast majority of the President's nominees were approved easily. I don't know the exact numbers, but I believe 210 out of 219 were approved, and a number of them withdrew. The battles over 5 turned out to be 5 out of 219. We do not need words like that. We need to look at this in a positive sense. There are times, as has been indicated in the recent debate that occurred in the Senate, where certain nominees have to be viewed very cautiously and carefully. For example, the person the President has chosen to go to the United Nations has caused close scrutiny of this individual.…”