Washington Squares

Each week until July 14, MoJo Wire lets you test your prowess with political trivia and gives you a chance to win a <b>FREE</b> subscription to <i>Mother Jones</i> magazine. Every Tuesday we’ll have a new set of questions about a different politician, plus the answers and winners from the week before. Just make sure you play before 5 p.m. Pacific Time each Monday.

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This Week: Phil Gramm

Phil GrammThe Republican Senator (and 1996 presidential candidate) from Texas mixes economic conservatism with homespun rhetoric. Gramm’s folksy vernacular endorses budget cuts and decreased government spending by pointing to Dicky Flatt, a print shop owner from Mexia, Tex., as a symbolic everyman. In the same hard-nosed spirit, Gramm urges welfare recipients to “get out of the wagon and help the rest of us pull.”

Gramm’s plain spoken, conservative politics have made him one of the most visible players in the G.O.P., despite the fact that he served his first three terms in Congress as a Democrat. Test your knowledge of his one-liners below.

  1. Gramm once described himself as:

    “The pit bull of the American Right.”
    “Strom Thurmond without the orange hair.”
    “The skunk at the garden party.”
    “Dickey Flatt’s second cousin.”
    “A foot soldier for the Bush Revolution.”

  2. Gramm earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Georgia, but his early educational experiences were rocky, to say the least. Which of the following grades did Gramm not fail?

    3rd
    4th
    7th
    9th

  3. In 1974, Gramm sent investment money to the producer of which two movies?

    “Truck Stop Women” and “Beauty Queens”
    “The Candidate” and “All the President’s Men”
    “Debbie Does Dallas” and “Saturday Night Fever”
    “Night of the Living Dead” and “Nightmare on Elm Street”
    “The Story of O” and “The Hatchet Murders”

  4. When asked if he would consider a woman as his vice-presidential running mate, how did Gramm respond?

    “Like who — some witch like Bella Abzug?”
    “I can’t imagine a woman saying yes.”
    “Elizabeth Dole says she’s sticking with Bob.”
    “We need brains, not boobs.”
    “Sophia Loren is not a citizen.”

  5. According to Gramm, “I own more _____________ than I need. But not as many as I want.”

    porno magazines
    pictures of myself
    web pages
    copies of Newt’s novel
    shotguns

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We’re compiling the results from this quiz, please come back later

Ted Rueter is the author of several books on politics, including The Newt Gingrich Quiz Book and The Rush Limbaugh Quiz Book.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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