Obama in Argentina: GOP Moving away from Mainstream Due to Its Opposition of Me

President Obama, appearing Thursday at a townhall in Buenos Aires, said the Republican Party is no longer a "mainstream" political party. 

"What you’re seeing right now is, in part, that the Republican Party has moved to the right very strongly during the course of my presidency," he told the Argetine audience. "That’s just a fact. And I think that the Republican Party, because of their efforts to oppose me, found themselves taking positions that were further and further away from the mainstream."

"It was successful in some ways in getting congressional candidates elected, because during the elections the turnout is typically very low, and so the most passionate people vote," he continued. "And in this new media age where people are getting their info, as I said before, in sound bites, and where they don’t necessarily get the same information, depending on whether they’re on the left or on the right, they can decide, I’m only going to read the things I agree with already, as opposed to getting a broader opinion."

"What happened was, is that it reinforced a politics that was based on what they oppose as opposed to what they were for," Obama said. "And primarily, they opposed me. And so that’s what’s happening inside of the Republican Party."