House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) would like Nancy Pelosi to apologize for her remarks suggesting that Republicans don’t care about “struggling families and really hungry children.”
But that’s not going to happen.
Over the weekend, the Democratic House minority leader said at the California Democrats State Convention in Los Angeles that an anonymous Republican friend told her that struggling Americans “are invisible, and the Republican caucus is indifferent to them.”
That was too much for Cantor, who demanded that she eat her words.
“How outrageous is that?” the No. 2 House Republican told Fox News on Thursday night. “The minority leader in the House should really, I think, apologize for that statement. That’s outrageous. We all want to help inner city kids. We all want to help people. And the debate should be around what’s the best way to help people.”
Cantor told a story about a New Orleans boy he met named Brian, whom he said came from a broken family but was working to go to college, and was able to attend an inner city school because of a “conservative policy of education choice.”
Pelosi stands by her remarks.
“Leader Pelosi’s statement is consistent with the House Republican record, with which Leader Cantor is surely familiar,” Drew Hammill, a top spokesman for the Democratic leader, told TPM in an email on Friday.
Update, 2:22 P.M. ET
Hammill and Cantor’s deputy chief of staff, Doug Heye, escalated the spat on Twitter after this article was published.
Nancy Pelosi leads unsuccessful opposition to the Gabriella Miller #KidsFirst Research Act and wants to call other people mean?
— Doug Heye (@DougHeye) March 14, 2014
Fine @GOPLeader, you pick MT @TPM Pelosi won’t apologize to Cantor for calling @HouseGOP mean: http://t.co/HGLEnfb2OT pic.twitter.com/G5i75m780f
— Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) March 14, 2014
