Redstate

Posted at 4:55pm on Jan. 23, 2008 The Senate GOP Leadership Embraces the Minority

By Erick

The Senate GOP has been having its retreat. This is the first retreat since Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was named Chairman of the Conference. In this position, Alexander is charged with developing the GOP agenda and controlling the message.

Today, the Republican Senators are at a retreat and they are getting their first taste of Lamar Alexander's leadership. His message: embrace being in the minority.

According to Senate staff familiar with the conversations, Senators have been hearing from multiple pollsters including Dave Winston. Winston has consistently been presenting polling to the GOP caucus over the last year that has shown that the war, spending, and corruption were three major issues leading to GOP defeat. You can get a sense of Winston's thinking here.

“What you’re seeing is a greater awareness of earmarks,” said David Winston, a GOP pollster who has done work for congressional Republicans on the issue. “As a result, people have been concerned about waste in government and now view earmarks in conflict with accountability.”

As if orchestrated, other "experts" who were invited by Republican leadership gave reports downplaying the GOP's struggle with spending and pork and focusing mainly on the war in Iraq as the problem. Senators were told that what the American people want most is cooperation in Congress and to see lawmakers get things done: Read -- Pass Democrat legislation. In fact, by the time it was over, I'm told you would have thought the Appropriators themselves had arranged the presentation to completely undermine Winston's assertion that waste and earmarks had anything at all to do with the GOP loss in 2006.

Lamar Alexander's central theme of the day now is that the GOP must work with the Democrats on "bipartisan legislation" to show the American people the Senate can get things done. Whoa unto the Republican Senator who obstructs the will of the majority.

Read on . . .

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