McConnell doubling down on Obama attack

Washington (CNN) - Republicans wrested control of the House from President Barack Obama this week, and their next goal is to take the White House away from him, their leader in the Senate said Thursday.

If the Republicans want to repeal health care reform, end bailouts, cut spending and reduce the size of government, "the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"Health care legislation is the worst bill that was passed in my time in the Senate. Financial services is somewhere close to it," said McConnell, who was elected in 1984.

"We can hope the president will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday's election. But we can't plan on it," he said.

"I don't want the president to fail. I want him to change," McConnell said.

The Republicans failed to capture control the Senate this week, leaving McConnell the minority leader, but they're riding high on a gain of at least six seats there and ten times that many in the House.

"For the past two years, Democrat lawmakers chose to ignore the American people, so on Tuesday the American people chose new lawmakers," McConnell said.

"The White House has a choice: they can change course, or they can double down on a vision of government that the American people have roundly rejected," he said.

But he insisted that the elections were not about the Republicans.

"They were about the Democrats. They got a report card. They got an F," he said.

"Americans voted for change in the last two elections because of two long and difficult wars and because they hoped a changing of the guard would stabilize the economy and get America moving again," he said.

But, he said, "Democrat leaders used the crisis of the moment to advance an agenda Americans didn't ask for and couldn't afford."