Cantor: GOP stands ready to work with Obama

Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), who is poised to become minority whip, said Sunday that the House GOP wants to work with President-elect Barack Obama to fix the nation’s problems.

“If you look at the roiling global financial situation, if you look at the fact that much of this country distrusts its government, if you look at the fact that we’re still fighting in two wars, I think that the Republicans in Congress will stand ready to work with this new president,” Cantor said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The lawmaker, who will likely replace Rep. Roy Blunt (Mo.) as minority whip as part of a shakeup of House GOP leaders, argued that the election has shown the Republicans must do things differently to succeed. However, he stated that Sen. Obama’s (D-Ill.) victory, coupled with large Democratic gains in the House and Senate, was “not some kind of shift of the American people toward some style of European social big government type of philosophy.”

Republicans would work with Obama on plans to boost the economy and help small businesses and families, he added.

“There is going to be, I think, a willingness to try and get things done,” he said, but also warned that the offer of cooperation had clear limits.

“If … he veers left and says, ‘No, the way to do this is to crank up the government spending machine and to raise taxes on families and small businesses,’ we’re going to oppose him,” Cantor said. The lawmaker noted that “at the end of the day, I think you will see a Republican Party in Congress serving as a check and a balance against Mr. Obama’s power and Speaker Pelosi’s power.”

Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), who is also seeking a House Republican leadership post and appeared on the show alongside Cantor, said that, “having dealt with the Democrats on Capitol Hill, and knowing the policies of the president-elect, we’re going to have some pretty vigorous disagreements, and they’re going to be along traditional fault lines.”

Pence pointed to the example of this summer, when Republicans staged a protest against the Democratic majority’s energy plans.

“What we’ve learned is that a minority of conservatives in the House plus the American people equals a majority,” he argued.

Cantor concluded by saying that, despite two large back-to-back defeats, Republicans would not necessarily have to slowly claw their way back to the majority.

“I think it's pretty unbelievable that we sit here today, given this date -- and four years ago the discussion was all about the Democrats unable to find their footing,” he said. “So I do think in this age of the 24/7 news cycle and the Internet world, we're going to have the ability to reach out to many supporters and many people across this nation and allow them to see very quickly the differences in terms of vision of where we want to take this country.”

Why should the Republicans in Congress do anything at all to help Democrats? The Democrats have total control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government, with a direct pathway to control the Federal Judicary as well, since their judges will essentially get through with token opposition. Let them do what they will. For anything that works they’ll get the credit, and for anything that doesn’t they have to should the blame. They Democrats are running the show now, thanks in large part to a Republican Party that looks at Conservatives as people to be purged from the Middle-of-the-Road Appeasing Centrist Moderate Independent Maverick Reach-Across-The-Aisle Bi-Partisan loving RINOS that gave us McCain, Dole, Bush 1 (and Bush 2, to be honest).

Bigger question is this: how long will the current minority of Republicans be as big as it is? You can bet ACORN aint goin’ nowhere, Republicans will be targeted in 2010 for even more defeats, thanks to the Obama revenue generator change.gov. These people currently in power have grand designs to never lose it again. Face it: we’re gonna get 20 million new “citizens” with an Amnesty Bill that will make what they tried to pass in 2005 look like a roadblock to citizenship. And all of these “newly minted citizens”, thanks to LaRaza translating for them that they have to vote for Democrats, will likely leave Republicans not only out in the political wilderness, but on the verge of extinction. The liberlas basically said as much this week. They see a huge opportunity to secure 1-party rule for all of our lifetimes - they are NOT gonna let that slip away. And because we had a Prez candidate that a lot of conservatives refused to support (with sound reasoning), we’re all gonna get the far worse of the two evils now.

America with a “c” is now gonna become Amerika with a “k”. And there’s not a lot Congressional Republicans are gonna be able to do about it procedure-wise. So let them do what they’re gonna do. The tipping point is gonna come from us (for as long as we’re permitted to speak out against The One), not the Republicans in the Congress.

I’d read a professor’s detailing about the rise and fall of any given Democracy. It’s decline is a result of voters figuring out they can vote themselves more and more benefits from the government treasury, cost free to them. When the demand for benefits outstrips the benefits themselves is the point the democracy collapses into a totalitarian dictatorship. And the life span of a Democracy in this process is about 200-300 years. So the USA is right on schedule. And this past election will be looked back on as the beginning of the end of what once was the freest nation on earth.

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