I guess retirement can loosen your tongue. Look at what retiring Ohio Senator George Voinovich had to say about the GOP:
“We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns,” Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s the southerners.”
Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.
“They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr,'” he said. “People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'”
I guess the Republican party’s southern strategy paid off a little too much. Perhaps the southern strategy was a better fit for the country at the time but Republicans didn’t adjust with the changing times. Worse for them, they didn’t help their party adjust to the changing times.