Politics & Power Quote by Pat Roberts

Roberts is trying to draw a bright, morally charged line at the exact moment American politics was blurring it on purpose. The phrase "rough and tumble" concedes the electorate's fatigue with civility policing; he’s not auditioning for sainthood. Then he pivots to a vivid rebuke: "partisan hand grenades" turns cheap shots into shrapnel. It’s a canny metaphor because it frames rhetoric as collateral damage, not sport. Someone always gets hurt, even if the thrower is grinning.

The hard stop - "Politics is not war. Terrorism is" - does two things at once. It demotes everyday partisan combat to its proper scale while elevating a real enemy into view. In a post-9/11 climate, that last word carries institutional weight: budgets, security powers, unity theater, the expectation of discipline. Subtext: save the language of existential threat for actual threats, because when politicians borrow wartime vocabulary for domestic fights, they justify wartime tactics - suspicion, dehumanization, emergency rules - against fellow citizens.

It’s also a strategic defense of legitimacy. By refusing the war frame, Roberts is implicitly saying the opposition is not the enemy; they are competitors inside the same constitutional arena. The line works because it’s both chastisement and reset button: you can fight hard, but if you keep calling it war, you’ll eventually start acting like you mean it.