The Hill News

Vice President Biden called out the GOP as a party of "repeal and repeat" Friday in a speech to the Democratic National Committee, characterizing the midterm election as a choice between Democrats and an increasingly conservative GOP.

"This ain't your father's Republican party," he said. "This is the 'Republican Tea Party.' And as they [voters] focus on that alternative … what they're going to find out is, the choices are pretty stark."

He criticized Republican Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul and Republican Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle as offering no new policy ideas. 

"Where are they alternatives? What has been proposed? he said. "They offer combination of the old failed policies of the Bush administration and a new set of draconian ideas basically on steroids."

He then compared recent initiatives by Democrats to those of the Republican Party, historically.

"We did [this term] what good Republicans! used to do as far back as Lincoln: we provided seed money," he said, of President Obama's emphasis on green technology in the stimulus bill. Biden then compared the push to President Lincoln's investment in the transcontinental railroad and President Eisenhower's creation of the Defense Advance Research Project Agency, which creates new technologies for the military.

"We know the government isn't going to heal the economy," he noted. "It's going to be through the free enterprise system. That's why seed money is so important."  

He concluded by emphasizing a positive outlook for Democrats troubled about November. 

"The last administration had a Ponzi scheme disguised as a vision,"he said. "That is what we inherited ... But they [voters] knew this road would going to be rough."

"Reports of the death of the Democratic Party have been greatly exaggerated," he continued. "Come November 3, there will be a Democratic majority in the House! and a Democratic majority in the Senate. That will be the cas! e, and w ere it not illegal, I'd make book on it."