In the wake of the presidential election, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) had an interesting choice of words for suggesting how his party should regroup and rebuild in looking ahead to 2016.
"We’ve got to give our political organization a very serious proctology exam," he said at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Las Vegas, Nev. earlier this week, the New York Times reports. "We need to look everywhere."
The Las Vegas Review Journal reports:
Barbour, speaking on a panel about the 2012 election, said Republicans need to improve their ground game to compete better in the next presidential election after Mitt Romney lost to [President Barack] Obama by only a couple of points nationwide and in several battleground states that decided the election.
Barbour, a prominent voice within the GOP, is not the first member of his party to come out and offer advice to fellow Republicans in how to approach the path ahead.
In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said, "We need to acknowledge the fact that we got beat." He added, "We clearly got beat and we need to recognize that."
Ted Cruz, the Republican elected in Texas to replace outgoing GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, said that if his party doesn't "do better in the Hispanic community, in a few short years Republicans will no longer be the majority party in" the Lone Star State. In a recent interview with Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker, he explained that because Texas has 38 electoral votes, "If that happens, no Republican will ever again win the White House."
HuffPost's Jon Ward reported on Thursday that as Republicans turn their attention to 2016, potential contenders and rising GOP stars are already distancing themselves from Romney.
