House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., took the media to task on Tuesday, making the case that press coverage is partly to blame for the Republican Party’s messaging woes, reports t
he Hill.
Speaking before the Ripon Society, a GOP think tank, Cantor said the party’s overall economic message is often shunted aside in favor of coverage of debt and deficits.
“The media has done a great job of sort of shoving us in the corner, because all they say we are concerned with is somehow balancing the budget and cutting spending and taking things away from people,” Cantor said.
“What we’re trying to say is that we need to do those things in order to reenergize the opportunity machine of America.
We’re about giving people opportunity. And that’s really what our agenda this year is about.”
Cantor said Republicans are largely culpable for the party’s failure to win the White House and Senate in last year’s election.
He said the GOP has to work harder to connect to the concerns of people at the lower rungs of the economic ladder.
“We also want to speak to the people who, frankly, have begun to turn us off because they don’t feel we have an agenda that speaks to them,” Cantor said.
“What are we doing for that assistant manager of a fast food restaurant? What are we doing for single moms who are waking up in the District of Columbia this morning and facing the fact that their kids are going to schools that can’t even provide a safe place for these mothers to leave their kids, let alone get an education?”
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