GOP: Democrats didn't win, 'we lost.'

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/01/gop_democrats_d.html#more

GOP: Democrats didn't win, 'we lost.'

“Well, we lost – there is no nice way of saying it,’’ said Rep. John Boehner (R., Ohio), minority leader of the House, facing the annual winter meeting of the Republican National Committee today.

With only one fleeting reference to the war in Iraq, a motivating factor for many voters in the turnover of Congress to the Democratic Party, Boehner made quick work of all the conventional wisdom for why the GOP lost in the midterm elections of 2006. “Whether it was Iraq… the fact that we had some corrupt members on the Hill, on both sides of the aisle,’’ he said, “the net result of all of it is, we lost.

“The Democrats… they didn’t win,’’ Boehner added. “We lost.’’

And the reason, the leader of the House Republicans said here in Washington today, points to what his party must concentrate on in the next two years if it hopes to regain control of Congress: Framing an agenda that speaks to the concerns of Americans who don’t really care who runs Congress so long as Congress addresses the deep concerns many Americans have.

“It was our lack of new ideas that didn’t give people reasons to go out and vote for us,’’ Boehner said at a luncheon for party executives from each state. “We have to reconnect… with the American people… develop new solutions to the problems they face every day… They have to see us as relevant…. And if they don’t see us as relevant, there is no way that we are going to be able to earn our way back to a majority.