A lot of Republicans are in high anxiety these days, looking to “re-brand” the party and rejigger its message after losing the White House and failing to make gains in the Senate last year. But U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions of North Texas doesn’t appear to be among them. The chairman of the influential House rules committee says the only thing wrong with the GOP is its candidates. “We are winning when we have good candidates,” Sessions said in Dallas this morning at a “congressional briefing” hosted by the National Center for Policy Analysis. “We lose when we have bad candidates.”
Some recent Republican hopefuls, he added, have been “lazy, undisciplined, didn’t know what they were talking about, and shot their mouth off.” For example, he said, Missouri’s U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill “should have been beaten.” (But she wasn’t, after opponent Todd Akin made his comment about “legitimate rape.”)
The congressman’s prime example of a bad Republican candidate, though, seemed to be the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. “Mitt Romney appeared like a kid who showed up for his science project and the teacher said, ‘Explain it,’ and Mitt couldn’t do it,” Sessions said. “His ‘dad,’ Paul Ryan, explained it to him, but Mitt didn’t get it. … That’s why we lost the last election.”
