Cantor on CNN: No plans to run for president

Culpeper’s five-term congressman continues to solidify his place nationally as a leading voice for the Republican Party.

It’s a year before his next election and Eric Cantor, R-Richmond, is also getting his face out there, regularly appearing on news shows.

In an interview last week on CNN, he talked about the minority party’s status and downplayed speculation that he is vying for the top office.

“I’m not running for president,” he said, though, according to CNN, “even his Republican colleagues suspect he has set his sights very high.”

Since being named Republican whip of the U.S. House last year, Cantor has increasingly taken a leadership role in the party and is one of its biggest fundraisers.

He continues to be parodied on Saturday Night Live and is easily spotted at various Republican events, including standing beside Virginia’s governor-elect, Bob McDonnell, at his victory speech on election night.

In the recent CNN story and video “Cantor a GOP power player,” he explained the three reasons why he felt his party struggled in last November’s election, following the two terms of President George W. Bush.

First, “Our fiscal credentials just fell apart,” he said, asserting that the Republican Party is known for fiscal prudence, limited government and lower taxes. “On the spending issue, the bar was not met.”

Second, “The public really tired of the Iraq War,” Cantor said, asserting that the Republican Party is also known as the party of national security. “There were some execution problems initially in Iraq.”

Finally, he said, the GOP struggled to find “its footing” in terms of “applying the principles we stand for,” that is, “limited government, free markets, individual responsibility and faith in God.”

“It was almost as if we were talking past people,” Cantor said.

In response to another question about Republicans being labeled “the party of no” and asked to list concrete examples of what it stands for, Cantor said if the GOP is going to object to the measures of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama, it needs to offer counter proposals.

“We’ve done that,” he said, harkening back to the beginning of the Obama administration.

“The stimulus bill was designed to create jobs — that’s where the White House started; it’s not where they ended up.”

In a release Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the Recovery Act to which Cantor referred and voted against had jumpstarted more than 10,000 transportation projects across America, creating tens of thousands of jobs.

Culpeper’s congressman said the stimulus package didn’t incorporate any Republican proposals focused on small business aid. He said the GOP economic recovery team was back at work looking at ways to address economic issues.

“Because that’s where the voters are right now,” Cantor said on CNN. “People are scared to death they’re going to lose their job — and if they haven’t already, they know someone who has.”

He said Americans are “searching for leadership that is going to restore their economic security.”

Cantor said the GOP stands “unanimously opposed to what the Democrats are trying to do” regarding health care and that a united party in the House, though in the minority, “sends a strong message to the Senate.”

Cantor told CNBC last week that the health bill, for senators, was “too much for them to deal with” and “then we’re into the election year and then it becomes even more difficult.”

“The real impact” Republicans can have, he said on CNN, is to win the majority again in next November’s election, which Cantor said would “provide a much more balanced approach” in Washington.

Cantor referenced the party’s recent victories in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races in making his case for a turn in the political tide back to red.

“Clearly the public does not want this kind of one-way extreme policies coming down from the White House and Congress right now,” he said.