Wednesday, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said the results from last nights midterm elections were a historic “direct rejection,” of President Barack Obama and potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s popularity and policies.
Partial transcript as follows:
Next month, we’re going to add to our majority when we win Louisiana. In the senate, it was a night of important firsts. Joni Ernst in the senate and the first woman in Congress from Iowa. Tom Cotton will be the youngest member of the Senate. The first woman elected to the senate from West Virginia. Tim Scott becomes the first African-American elected to both the house and the senate. In the house, we don’t know exactly how big the majority will be, but it will be a majority bigger than most of us have seen in our lifetimes. We’re proud to see mia love win in Utah, will hurd in Texas, and the youngest woman ever elected to congress.”
In the governors races, Americans affirmed their leader republican governors. And in the bluest of blue states states, they rejected democrats. In Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois. Even the president’s home state where he campaigned vigorously, elected a republican, and that’s how big this victory really is.
Finally, state houses, Republicans captured many of the state legislative chambers, including the Nevada senate and the assembly, the West Virginia house, the Minnesota house, the New Mexico house, the Colorado senate, and the New Hampshire house. We’ll have the largest number of republican chambers and state legislative seats held in history.
So it was a historic night at every single level. This was all about a direct rejection of the Obama agenda. As all of you know, President Obama said very clearly that his policies were on the ballot and voters were very clear in return. They want nothing to do with the policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Up and down the ballot, these were the presidents’ candidates. These were the Clintons’ candidates, and they lost. Remember Hillary Clinton campaigned in Kentucky, Grimes lost by over 15 points. Then Hillary went to Iowa and Joni Ernst won by eight points. Hillary couldn’t save the Massachusetts governor race. We won in red states, blue states, and we won in purple states. We won because our policies resinated with the electorate, our ground game mobilized voters.
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