Former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole doesn’t think much of his party these days.
Dole, who ran against President Bill Clinton in 1996 and was the leader of Senate Republicans for much of the 1980s and 90s, slammed the GOP for excessive obstructionism and for failing to convey a forward-looking agenda during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
Never one to mince words, Dole did not absolve President Obama of the blame for the dysfunction in Washington, D.C., but he directed the lion’s share of his criticism at his own party.
“I think they ought to put a sign on the [Republican] national committee doors that says ‘closed for repairs’ until New Year’s Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas,” Dole said.
Asked whether Republicans of years past, many of whom had a more diplomatic approach to compromise and governance than today’s Republicans, would be able to make it in the modern GOP, Dole said, “I doubt it.”
“Reagan wouldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas,” he explained.
“We might have made it, but I doubt it.”
And much of the blame for the gridlock, Dole said, rests with a fractious Congress that seems more interested in partisan drama than doing its job.
“It seems to be almost unreal that we can’t get together on a budget or legislation,” Dole said, comparing today’s Congress unfavorably with the institution in which he served for decades. “We weren’t perfect by a long shot, but at least we got our work done.”
