February 5, 2009: Republican Leader Equates GOP Strategy with Taliban-Like ‘Insurgency’

Pete Sessions. [Source: Washington Post]Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, says that House Republicans should become political “insurgents” to oppose and undermine the Obama administration, specifically its economic proposals, and says the GOP can learn from the example of the Taliban. “Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” he tells editors of the conservative National Journal. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban—I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.” Sessions complains that neither President Obama nor House Democrats have attempted to work with Republicans in a truly bipartisan fashion. “If they do not give us those options or opportunities then we will then become insurgency of a nature to where we do those things that are necessary to making sure the American public knows what we think the correct answer is. So we either work together, or we’re going to find a way to get our message out.” Sessions says he is not comparing House Republicans to the Taliban: “I simply said one can see that there’s a model out there for insurgency.” Sessions is interrupted by an aide, who explains that Sessions is merely trying to express the need for Republicans to start thinking about how to act strategically as the minority party. Sessions blames House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for the Republicans’ new approach: “I think insurgency is a mindset and an attitude that we’re going to have to search for and find ways to get our message out and to be prepared to see things for what they are, rather than trying to do something about them. I think what’s happened is that the line was drawn in the sand” by Pelosi. [National Journal, 2/5/2009] At a House Republicans’ retreat the week before, Sessions told fellow Republicans that they “need to get over the idea that they’re participating in legislation and ought to start thinking of themselves as ‘an insurgency’ instead.” [Think Progress, 2/5/2009]