Boehner: Future of GOP is Cao
Flash Back:
Boehner: Future of GOP is Cao
By JOSH KRAUSHAAR & ANDY BARR | 12/9/08 4:32 AM ESTOne week ago, most Republicans had never heard of Anh “Joseph” Cao. Those who were aware he was challenging Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) thought he had almost no chance of winning. Not a single Republican in the state’s congressional delegation donated to his campaign.
Today, however, three days after his improbable victory, Cao is the toast of the Republican Party, hailed as the future of the GOP by no less than House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio.
...Boehner touted Cao as a symbol of the party’s future in a memo Sunday night.
For conservatives sensitive to the GOP’s lack of diversity, Cao’s win represents an opportunity to put a new face on a party trying to remake itself after a devastating election cycle, one marked by an exceptionally poor Republican performance among minority voters.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday that Cao’s election represented a victory for a different kind of GOP politics, a type of politics he has frequently predicted that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal may bring to the national stage if he were to run for president.
“I think the election of Cao is a major event in New Orleans,” Gingrich said. “You now have the first Vietnamese-American occupying a seat that nobody would have thought he could win. This is the opposite of red-vs.-blue, base-mobilization politics.”
...But ensuring that Cao is more than a one-term wonder in Congress will be a challenge for Republicans. He benefited from a low-turnout election, running against a congressman indicted on 16 counts of bribery.
Cao will be representing the most heavily Democratic seat of any Republican in Congress — his district gave Barack Obama about 75 percent of the vote against John McCain.
