“I guess I’m known as a RINO now, which means a Republican in name only, because... of social views, perhaps, or common sense, which seems to escape members of our party. For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you. He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress... If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the east or something... But if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise on the issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains.”
—former Senator Alan Simpson, on Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS, commenting on the GOP's refusal to consider compromise on new tax revenues