GOP-'tea party' link a sign of Democrats' 'desperation'?
| Washington
Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee, says it is a “pretty good sign of their desperation” for the Democratic National Committee to launch an effort this week to try to damage Republican candidates’ electoral chances by linking the GOP to the extreme elements of the Tea Party.
Mr. Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, spoke Thursday at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast for reporters.
He was asked about a plan announced Wednesday by the Democratic National Committee seeking to reinforce a link in voters’ minds between Republicans and Tea Party positions. DNC Chairman Tim Kaine released what he called the “Republican Tea Party Contract on America” which, he claimed, showed what Republicans would do if they took control of Congress in November’s elections. Items on the ten-point list included repealing Wall Street reform and health insurance reform, privatizing Social Security, and ending Medicare.
"They usually wait until October to start telling voters that Republicans are going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. It is a sign of their desperation that they have started that in July this year,” Gillespie said.
The rise of Tea Party movement is a net positive for the Republican Party, Gillespie said. “I do find it somewhat amusing the notion that a wave and a flood of newly engaged voters who are concerned about debt and rising taxes and government intervention in our economy who are coming into the political process, many of them for the first time, is somehow a problem for Republicans.”
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