Political Quotes

“today I rise to speak for the last time on the Senate floor as majority whip. With the swearing in of our colleagues in January, will come the changing of the guard in our elected leadership in which I have been proud to serve since 2006. As we all know, the whip is also known as the assistant majority leader, and I have been proud to assist our majority leader in all we have worked on together to accomplish in the Senate. I often tell people that ``whip'' sounds a lot more coercive than it really is because in the Senate, you can't really make somebody do something they don't want to do. I understand the term comes from the old country. It referred to the person in fox hunting who was responsible for keeping the dogs from straying during the chase--something I have never done and, no doubt, will never do. One of the fathers of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, in the middle of a contentious debate in the British House of Commons, used the term as far back as 1769. When he used it, he was talking about enforcing discipline, not as a way to punish disobedience but as a way to stay focused on your goal. I think that meaning still holds because the overarching goal of anyone who serves in this position is to keep the team together. The first Republican whip was James Wadsworth, elected in 1915. He served in the Spanish-American War. He opposed Prohibition, and he was chairman of what was then known as the Committee on Military Affairs.…”