Reid: Unless Republicans 'Change, They Can't Elect a President'

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that unless the Republican Party changes its stripes, it can kiss the Oval Office goodbye.

“I think that it’s pretty clear we have Democrats that are viable, and I think the Republicans, unless they change, they change, they can’t elect a president,” Reid told MSNBC when asked about 2016. “They’re — they’ve done everything to dump on women. They’ve done everything to dump on Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, gay and lesbians. And who else have I left off? They have — they have taken everybody.”

When asked if there was any Republican he feared could win, Reid quipped, “I would hope that Newt Gingrich would run. I’m scared to death of him.”

“I don’t see anybody out there now,” he added.

The majority leader stressed that in the Senate, “I do a lot of the things that I learned from the Clintons.”

But he lamented the filibuster, which he unilaterally did away with on nominations yet is still vexing him on key bills such as raising the minimum wage.

“I’ve had to overcome more than 500 filibusters, 500. To give your viewers kind of an idea how many that is, during the six years that Lyndon Johnson was leader, he had to overcome one. Mine, over 500. And it’s because of the deal they made right after Obama was elected. So I hope that they will suddenly change,” he said.

Reid hailed himself as a “deal-maker.”

“That’s what I did. I ran the floor for Senator Daschle for all those years. And I — you can ask Republicans then, who were here the — I was the guy they came to to get things done,” he said, adding that he won’t be budging from a minimum wage hike to $10.10.

“Why have I had to overcome 500 filibusters, I mean, on motions to proceed that mean nothing except to eat up time. So, you know, we were given the assurance that at the beginning of this year there would be no motions to proceed necessary. Of course that lasted about a week and a half. So I say to my Republican friends, let us get on these bills. We — we use of hundreds and hundreds of hours on waste. On the floor today, I said everybody be aware out there in TV land, why are we doing nothing today? Because we are now in another filibuster,” he said in reference to an energy efficiency bill.

“…One of the problems that press has in modern day journalism is everything you do is a tit for tat. You won’t call things the way they actually exist. What’s happening here is the Republicans have stopped everything from happening. And there’s no question that that meeting took place. That was an agreement made. They know who was there. They know what has happened since then. So you can give me the tit for tat all you want, but the fact is, we want to legislate. We want to legislate. We want to take votes.”