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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.”
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