“The last time our party failed to hold any of the five statewide offices in Virginia was in 1969,” he said, noting that this is when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. “So these recent defeats have inflamed a lot of tension and as a result, we’ve been seeing a lot of finger pointing and a lot of blame and feelings of resentment. Now we’ve got to commit to ending that. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t win elections.”

His 25-minute speech came during the annual three-day Republican Party of Virginia “Advance.”

Cantor said that showing Republicans care about their plight does not mean sacrificing conservative values.

“If we take our conservative principles and bring them directly to the kitchen table, if we speak directly to the people and explain why our conservative solutions work and why liberal ideas are set up to fail, there is no beating our Republican Party,” he said.

“When our party is not united, and when we fail to offer a plan that connects with people and the problems that they’re having, we lose at the ballot box,” he added. “And, when we lose at the ballot box, we get policies like Obamacare.”