Rep. LaTourette (R-OH): Idea GOP Doesn’t Need To Moderate Is ‘Crap’

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Count Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) among those who think the party swung too far to the right in 2012 to defeat President Obama. In a CNN interview, he bluntly called tea party complaints that they weren’t conservative enough “crap” and singled out Todd Akin and Richard Muordock in particular for scaring off swing voters. 

 A partial transcript, via Political Wire: 

LATTOURETTE: There’s a one-word phrase we use in Ohio for that: crap. I mean, that’s nonsense… The Republican Party cannot be a national party if we give up the entire East Coast of the United States and say — we don’t have any Republicans in New England, we don’t have any Republicans in the Mid-Atlantic states. We can’t continue to diss the Latino voters and — you know, my wife’s a Democrat, and she was so close to voting for Mitt Romney, but then Mourdock and Akin opened their mouth and we sent them running back to the Democratic Party because they think we’re nutty. We have the right message on the finances. We have to get out of people’s lives, get out of people’s bedrooms, and we have to be a national party, or else we’re going to lose.

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