Congressman Bob Inglis Makes Like a Marketing Maven

(Unedited press release from SCTV.org)

Columbia, SC… In an interview on ETV's "The Big Picture on the Radio" Friday, Congressman Bob Inglis, who hails from the Upstate, likened himself to a product for sale when asked about rumors that Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer might run against him next year, when Inglis’ Fourth District seat comes up for grabs.

When asked by host Andrew Gobeil what he thought about having Bauer as an opponent for the Republican nomination, Inglis responded, "He's a very capable campaigner, so I take that seriously. I take any candidate seriously…particularly in this environment where you've got an 11 percent approval rating for the Congress.”

He then added, “That means all of us that are in Congress should be aware that people are not happy with the results they're getting. And my view about politics is somewhat like a product. If you're happy with a product that you're getting, or a service that's being rendered and you feel like you're getting value from that vendor, you'll buy again. If you're not getting value, you won't buy again. And so, I, as somebody who is trying to deliver solutions in Washington, have to deliver value.”

And then Inglis, tackling the subject of the current climate in Washington, said, “Now of course, in this environment the challenge with people with hot rhetoric and (who) may be a little bit fast and loose with the facts, are able to lead people into some pretty dangerous positions and sort of froth them up into a frenzy. I'm aware of that risk. So, I've got to be as articulate as I can in expressing solution orientation rather than just fiery rhetoric on the partisan end of things."

This is not the first time Inglis had tapped into his inner marketer. Earlier this week, when talking with Gobeil for an upcoming episode of “The Bhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifig Picture” on ETV, Inglis discussed the trashing of the Republican brand, by none other than the Republicans themselves.

“Yeah, I think it was the president and the Congress working together in a culture of spending that basically caused us to exceed the budget and have no thought about how we're going to pay for all this,” Inglis said. “…And we basically took our brand and totally trashed it. We were the party better able to balance the budget by something like 20 points (in the polls), compared to the Democrats. Now we're behind them? They're the party better able to balance the budget? That's a real change, and you've gotta get up early in the morning to trash your brand that badly. We've got to get our brand back. We've got to establish that we're the people that can balance the budget and…that is going to be a big challenge.”

The Big Picture on the Radio can be heard Fridays at 9 a.m. on ETV Radio's four news formats: 88.1-WRJA Sumter, 89.1-WLJK Aiken, 89.9- WJWJ Beaufort, and 90.1-WHMC Conway. The program can also be streamed from www.myetv.org.