While campaigning in New Hampshire on Tuesday, former Vice President Joe Biden spoke of an impending “epiphany” that the Republican Party will likely have once President Trump is out of office.
“I just think there is a way, and the thing that will fundamentally change things is with Donald Trump out of the White House. Not a joke. You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” Biden said, according to several news outlets there. “It’s already beginning in the House now … If we can’t change, we’re in trouble. This nation cannot function without generating consensus. It can’t do it.”
Biden also reportedly harped that the Republican Party is not “your father’s Republican Party.” But the former vice president’s “epiphany” assessment of the party across the aisle isn’t new. As the Washington Post pointed out, Biden made similar comments about the GOP in 2008 and 2012, long before President Trump was even a figure on the political landscape, though in 2012 he was alluding to how far-right the Party had gone in recent years.
"This is not your father's Republican party. This is a different outfit” — Joe Biden in 2008
“Folks, this is not your father's Republican Party” — Joe Biden in 2012
“This is not your father’s Republican Party, by the way. This is a different outfit” — Joe Biden today
— Matt Viser (@mviser) May 13, 2019
Biden has acknowledged in the past that many see his affection for Republicans to be a deterrent for his presidential ambitions, but the former vice president has shrugged off that criticism in the past.
“I read in the New York Times today that I — that one of my problems is if I ever run for president, I like Republicans,” Biden said in January. “Bless me father for I have sinned. But…from where I come from I don’t know how you get anything done.”
