Republicans are talking big in Tampa, Fla., but so far the GOP convention has offered more sizzle than meat, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor said Thursday.
“The rhetoric [at the GOP convention] is really good and strong. I’m still waiting for what substance they’re offering,” the Democrat from Arkansas said during a break from touring Arkansas Children’s Hospital’s Nutrition Center.
State Republican officials fired back, saying Pryor’s support for President Barack Obama will cost him politically down the road. Pryor faces re-election in 2014. Several Republicans have eyed the race, including GOP U.S. Reps. Tim Griffin and Steve Womack.
“Pryor has supported the failed policies of Obama, their engine is out of gas, and theAmerican people must now look to the Republican Party for a solid future. This is the party that will tell the truth and bring real programs to bring this country back,” party Chairman Doyle Webb said during a break from convention activities in Tampa.
Pryor said he hasn’t heard any details from Republicans on the issues that have been touted at their convention, including health-care change.
“They really are not offering many concrete solutions. You take something like health care. They want to ‘repeal and replace,’ but they don’t have anything to replace it with. They haven’t put anything in writing that we can look at and see if we can support it,” he said.
Tax change is another area that Republicans need to explain further, Pryor said. Too many Republicans have tied their hands by signing a pledge not to raise taxes circulated by Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative group that seeks to shrink government.
“They’ve all pretty much taken this pledge to Grover Norquist [the group’s founder] where they say they’re not going to raise taxes. I don’t know how you can do tax reform if you have a pledge like that,” Pryor said.
Pryor will attend the Democratic Party’s convention inCharlotte, N.C., next week. He says he hasn’t been involved in the “messaging” at all, but ventured a guess as to the political tone.
“I think they’ll remind people of what Obama inherited when he came into office. I know it’s not going gangbusters right now, but we’re not losing jobs anymore. They’ll also remind people that it was President Bush’s policies that got the economy to where it was and [Mitt] Romney wants to go back to those policies,” Pryor said.
After the convention, Pryor plans to support Democratic candidates during his congressional recess in October. His party’s strength is that it doesn’t act like the nationalparty, he said. Candidates need to emphasize that difference he said.
“There is a huge differenceand always has been; I’d say it’s gone back a 100 years,” he said. “We balance the budget lower taxes on people, haveadded jobs in a very difficult economy.”
The same strategy holds for the three Democrats vying for congressional seats, Pryor said.
“I’ve talked to all of them at one point or another. The question is are they going to represent the national party or Arkansas? We don’t take pledges to Grover Norquist and say we won’t do x, y and z. We don’t conduct ourselves that way.”
Pryor’s attempt to distinguish Arkansas’ Democrats from their national counterparts won’t work, said the GOP’s Webb. State Democrats supported the president’s health-care law, putting into place parts of it, such as the insurance exchange, he said.
“It’s going to take a lot more smoke and mirrors to make that work,” he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 08/31/2012