"The meetings with Mexican officials were planned before the election, but they took on even greater significance after Trump's win. But even before the election, it was obvious that my party had taken a sharp turn away from the conservative principles that have defined it for nearly a century and that I have tried to uphold for my entire life. And the animating question of how this had happened to my party already seemed to be a profound problem for our democracy, and one badly in need of a solution. I write this book because we as conservatives — and conservatism itself — are in crisis."

“Mr. President, near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.”

“A major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don't.”

“But in the tweeting life of our president, strategy is difficult to detect. Influencing news cycles seems to be the principal goal; achieving short-term advantage, you bet. But ultimately, it's all noise and no signal. And in the absence of preparation and a well-considered strategy — especially when one is moving global chess pieces — volatile unpredictability is not a virtue. We have quite enough volatile actors to deal with internationally as it is without becoming one of them.”

“Mr. President, I rise today to say: enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it.”

“But it is one thing to keep your adversaries or your "near-peer" competitors off balance with strategic unpredictability and quite another to keep the American people themselves similarly at a loss as to what exactly is going on, which is now a daily occurrence, to say nothing at all about the vexation on the part of many of our traditional allies all over the world. I began writing this book after returning from a trip to Mexico City on a one-senator diplomatic mission to calm and reassure the nation to our south — a vitally important friend and trading partner — that all will be well, that America is still America. But is it?”

“Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful — in fact, we question the powerful most ardently — to do so is our birthright and a requirement of our citizenship — and so, we know well that no matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality.”