Much of what Tea Party candidates claimed about the world and the global economy during the 2010 elections would have earned their adherents a well-deserved F in any freshman economics (or earth science) class.

It will be about which candidate which of the two candidates remaining is best suited to make a positive difference in the lives of North Carolina families and I submit to each of you tonight that I am that candidate and Elizabeth Dole is not.

The news is what it is. It's going to be good it's going to be positive it's going to be negative. It's going to have all sorts of effects on candidates always.

Political consultants are pugilists masters in the dark art of negativity. Which is why it's surprising to hear Democrats such as Steve McMahon and Republicans like Rich Galen urging their presidential candidates to be more well positive.

People are fed up with the politics where candidates just rip each other apart and then the voters lose in the end because no one really knows what anybody stands for.

When I started 'CNN ' I made the decision to stay out of endorsing candidates and let the doers make up their own minds about politics that it wasn't going to come from me.

I guess you'd call me an independent since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves no matter what the party label.

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is I think the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

For us political activists and candidates the morning after any election is a mix of emotions - the personal and the immediate the culmination of your own recent campaigning efforts and the fortunes of your party and the success or otherwise of what you stand for and believe in.

Research has shown that the perceived style of leadership is by far the most important thing to most voters in evaluating officeholders and candidates.

Apparently a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

My main objective is to prepare candidates for professional baseball however the majority of our graduates will go home as much better qualified amateurs.

Well first of all I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is they believe that for years and years and years the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.

Up against the corporate government voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers. The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust.

The Republican Party is not in the hands of the Jewish lobby in America as the Democratic Party must look quite often to Jewish money to finance candidates.

The reason that minorities and women don't have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.

It's important to ask candidates about their beliefs in part because politicians frequently exploit religious faith - often with the idea that voters will be more likely to unthinkingly accept certain political positions so long as they arise from religious belief.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

That's what my Dad always told me on the ballot they should always have a third choice like none of the above then if enough people picked that they'd have to get new candidates.

The people of South Carolina support conservatives who are trying to push real change and the people of South Carolina expect their presidential candidates to back them up when they show courage.

I want to find the candidates who understand the principles of American exceptionalism and have the character the courage and the confidence to actually lead the greatest nation in the world.

In politics there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers and then there are those like John McCain who use their careers to promote change.

I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

One thing I resent is the slur that I just support political candidates because of the business.