In yesterday’s Round-Up I mentioned that Sen. George Voinovich has a theory about why the Republican Party has been struggling lately – too many Southerners:
Too many conservative senators like Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are to blame for the GOP’s downfall, one of their retiring Republican colleagues complained Monday.
“We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns,” Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s the southerners.”
Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.
“They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr,'” he said. “People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'”
So today, one of the GOP’s Southern senators decided to speak-up, touting their role in ensuring that the Republican Party remains firmly rooted in the conservative, family values that made America great.
Sen. David Vitter disagreed Wednesday with criticism that Southern Republicans are ruining the party and said a return to conservative values is the best way to restore political power.
“I’m on the side of conservatives getting back to core conservative values,” said Mr. Vitter, Louisiana Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “There are a lot of us from the South who hold those value, which I think the party is supposed to be about. We strayed from them in the past few years, and that’s why we performed so badly in the national elections.”
If “getting back to core conservative values” includes “violating the sanctity of your marriage” (and recently, it sure seems as if it does) then Vitter is the perfect man to be leading this effort.
