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We have a circle of corruption and impunity that is too strong.

We think our leadership has been too timid to go after corruption, and often times, they bow to the liberal progressive demands of the White House instead of standing up for our values.

We have to reform the entire political process. It's got to start with leadership by example.

I think there is a case for strong action and intervention when there is criminality and when the leaders are corrupt or behaving in a criminal fashion.

Corruption has reached an unacceptable level. It devours resources that could be devoted to the citizens. It impedes the proper carrying out of market rules and penalizes the honest and capable.

Corruption is something you face all the time. Avoid it.

I've always seen my campaigns against corruption as political work of a purer form than what opposition leaders usually do. All they do is hold roundtables and release political statements, which is all well and good. But there are concrete things that need to get done in order to achieve the basic goal of every opposition politician.

This is about systemic, institutional corruption, not personality. To ask the Democratic leadership to clean things up would be like asking the old Soviet bureaucracy under Brezhnev to reform itself. It ain't going to happen.

Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.