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The Hill : The Hill's Jim Mills recently caught up with retiring Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) to ask, among other things, what went wrong for Republicans in 2008.
The Hill : Pryce listed President Bush's administration as one factor, saying "history overtook" the president during his two terms in office. See her remarks below.
Rep. Pryce : It's really more complex than, you know, I think, anybody can put into words. There'll be volumes and volumes about this. But I think it can be boiled down to a number of things, but they're not simple.
Rep. Pryce : One is, you know, President Bush, he came to Washington with his arms wide open, wanting to embrace Democrats, wanting to work together, and he did it with Ted Kennedy with No Child Left Behind, and some other things, but then events took it way from him. Events just made his aministration one that was, you know, history will judge, but it turned many Americans away. And so we have that factor.
Rep. Pryce : We have, you know, history in the makign with the first black president in our history and that was, I think, a tremenbous thing to see and to watch. And you know, we've just had years and years of Republicans in control and Republicans weren't able to do things that Republicans should have been able to do -- that would be contracting the govt as opposed to expanding it, and people got tired of us not acting like Republicans.
Rep. Pryce : And so a number of things happened, and I you know, wish this president the very best. Maybe he can do what George Bush wanted to do, but because history overtook him, I think, was unable to.
