Sure, Tom Cole may be somber, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t delusional:
“Clearly, we have got problems that are deep and serious in terms of how we are going to do in the fall elections,” Cole said. “Having said that… we haven’t lost as a party because of the ideological agenda on the other side. The obvious challenge we face is we had somebody running as a Republican, pro-life, pro-gun, who wants to cut taxes, wants to control spending. That’s not particularly in step with where the Democratic majority is. So, that is going to create some opportunities for us. I think those issues clarify and reinforce [our agenda].”
Roy Blunt joins in on the insanity:
GOP Whip Roy Blunt downplayed the GOP’s problems, saying that “six months ago, Rudy Giuliani was the front runner in the Republican contest and Barack Obama did not have a chance.”
Blunt said that Democrats won in Mississippi and Louisiana by running “on what the GOP is for.”
“So we know now that the message works,” he said. “So we have to be sure that nationally, we connect the message with the Republican Party, rather than the other party.”
I understand the art of spin, but did these clowns not watch the election that just unfolded? Sure, Childers embraced conservative social values that made him a good fit with his Northern Mississippi district. But he also ran as an unabashed economic populist, and launched scathing attacks against Greg Davis for yukking it up with Dick Cheney.
On oil:
“We need to strip away the subsidies from ExxonMobil and Big Oil,” Childers said to a question about high gasoline prices. “They’re not going to get a lot of sympathy from me.”
On healthcare:
Travis Childers will fight to improve the quality of healthcare, while lowering costs for working families. He supports expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), which will provide affordable healthcare to tens of thousands of middle-income children in Mississippi.
On the economy and corporate trade deals:
Our leaders should have been thinking of the economic problems we face today when they passed unfair trade deals that sent our jobs overseas, gave billions in subsidies to big oil companies, ignored the home mortgage crisis, and kept spending as the deficit and national debt hit all time highs.
On Iraq, Childers was the only candidate who favored withdrawal:
He was the only one of five candidates — three Republicans, two Democrats — at a campaign stop in Nesbit last week who said point-blank that U.S. troops don’t belong in Iraq. […]
Childers said he favors coming up with a plan to withdraw troops over 12 to 18 months and leave the Iraqis to fight among themselves, as they have for thousands of years.
He said he’s amazed more people on the campaign trail haven’t asked about a national debt of more than $9 trillion.
“We’re spending our money, folks, in Iraq. We need to be spending our money in America.
If all that is what morons like Tom Cole and Roy Blunt consider a “Republican platform”, then maybe their party isn’t doomed to the electoral dustbin after all.
However, we all know that that is pretty damn far from the truth.
Keep dreaming, GOP.
Cole’s press release last night struck me as pretty in tune with reality. This is more like it.
Keep it up, guys, all these Democrats are winning by running as Republicans. So all you need to do is remind voters that you’re the real Republicans.
I say they should indeed continue to run on what they’re distilling Childers’ campaign down to, his pro-gun and pro-life stance.
In doing so they’ll miss the whole point, ignoring the issues he ran on that really resonated with the voters, and instead of digging themselves out, the hole they’re in will just get deeper and deeper, until it swallows them whole.
All in all, I’d support that agenda.
So basically, what they’re saying, is that these candidates in Louisiana and Mississippi ran as traditional Southern Democrats…. Hmm.. What a concept. lol What these elections I hope have done is get some of those old Dixiecrats to look at the Democratic party again. I say, welcome home.