Former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-OK), who publicly flirted with the idea of pursuing the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee earlier this week, said on Wednesday that the GOP must take a serious look at its outreach efforts to various constituencies in the wake of the party’s disappointing showing at the polls last month. But Watts, responding to indications that current RNC chairman Reince Priebus has already secured enough support to win another term, said that the group “probably isn’t ready for the kind of change that I would be proposing.”
“That tells me that the RNC probably isn’t ready for the kind of change that I would be proposing,” Watts said during an appearance on MSNBC. “It tells me that we continue to grade our own test and if you continue to grade your own test, you continue to make a good grade. And so I think we’ve got to take a serious look at where we are as a party and look at what has happened to us in the last couple elections.”
Watts continued, “And I think there’s enough fault to go around for everybody, but at the same time I do believe that the Republican National Committee, the place where all of these things, these type of outreach efforts, these type of relationships, where they should be built, I think it should be in that institution.”
