Can I give a little advice to the old man on Capitol Hill? Stop saying teabagger. Ask your younger staffers what it means.

Usually step one in a recovery is admitting that you have a problem. I think that's an important thing for the Republican Party to do.

We focused so much on saying, "Don't vote for them and here's why" and we didn't tell the American people "Vote for us and here's why."

We need to tap into new issues. There's a way to resurrect the sound policies of our party, but also to look toward new issues - kitchen-table issues like the rising cost of education. I think that's a winning issue for Republicans.

Republicans and conservatives have to figure out that Democrats have plenty of rope to hang themselves on their own. But you have to give voters a reason to vote for you as well.

You also need to show a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to impropriety. That's one of the things, again, that Republicans left on the table as a missed opportunity.

I think the liberals are going to try to blame - and they already are - this entire mess on the right and on President [George W.] Bush. I think Republicans dropped the ball on actually articulating why we got into this economic mess, but it's not too late.