Republican Senator says his party is 'full of slogans but empty of ideas'

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, who lost his re-election bid in a republican primary, told a Republican group on Tuesday that the party could even take back the Senate soon but will lose both houses just as fast if the GOP continues to rely on slogans and not solutions.

“As I look out at the political landscape now, I find plenty of slogans on the Republican side, but not very many ideas,” Bennett told The Ripon Society.

“Indeed, if you raise specific ideas and solutions, as I’ve tried to do on health care with Sen. Ron Wyden (D- Oregon), you are attacked with the same vigor as we’ve seen in American politics all the way back to slavery and polygamy; you are attacked as being a wimp, insufficiently pure, and unreliable.”

Bennett was criticized before the Utah Republican Convention in May for teaming up with Wyden to push a health care measure he considered a rival to the Democrats’ reform effort, and the senator came in third to two challengers — Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater — who courted the tea party movement.

Bennett said there was great momentum for Republicans to take back the House and, with the death of Sen. Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, there’s a chance a Republican could win that seat as well and join a landslide to bring the Senate into GOP control.

But, Bennett added, the Republican Party may find itself in the role played by Robert Redford in the film, “The Candidate,” who after winning office turns to his aides and says,“What do we do now?”

“The concern I have is that ideology and a demand for absolute party purity endangers our ability to govern once we get into office,” Bennett said.

 Utah Republican Party Chairman Dave Hansen says Bennett is right on one part: if the GOP takes over without any good solutions or doesn’t learn from past mistakes, it will hand the government back to the Democrats quickly.

But Hansen noted that the party hasn’t put together one major campaign document focusing on what ideas it will pursue if it controls Congress, like it did in 1994 with the Contract for America.


Watch Sen. Bennett's comments here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1e3h78wzL0&feature=player_embedded