Posted on 11/09/2008 11:11:00 AM PST by BGHater
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.”
Thats exactly what he said.
If you’re not a RINO then you’d better now “SOUND” like one and this guy did.
AND THIS IS THE GUY THEY WANT AS (WHIP)-I’m out; I’ll never be part of this GOP, maybe when they reform and allow the RSC to appoint their leadership I’ll support them. Untill then.. I hate this (pansy) leadership?? And why is Mike Pence only running for Conference Chair rather than Leader?? He’s be much better suited to that job.
Boeher (while might be a nice guy..) has got to go. He helped lead us into this mess!
“to fix the nation’s problems”
The only problem is that they, Democrats and Republicans, have been fixing our so-called problems for decades. Enough of the fixing, i.e., trying to cheat reality.
I’m taking a wait and see on Cantor and all the rest of the remaining GOPers.
Defintely no RINO. Eric Cantor is a rock ribbed conservative. Lets hope he and others like him step up to reclaim the party from the RINO’s that led us to defeat.
Amen!
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