Good advice from Newt Gingrich (Jan. 27)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Republicans are still patting themselves on the back over the election of Sen. Scott Brown, and you can’t blame them. Good news, for them, is hard to come by these days.
Many theories have been advanced as to why Brown won. They are couched in terms like “the voters are just afraid of the health-care bill,” and “Obama’s magic has worn off.” Both those theories might seem rational, but the actual reason is probably less esoteric. What if the normally Democrat Bean-Staters just didn’t care for state Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democrat?
Not that Brown didn’t run a good campaign. He ran a great campaign, with the help of Karl Rove, the GOP political genius who helped elect George W. Bush, and now seems to be a principal Republican thought leader.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal before the election, Rove said, “If Massachusetts puts Brown in, it’s a message of ‘that’s enough. Let’s stop the giveaways and let’s get jobs going.’”
That is what he’d like the message to be, at any rate.
Aside from the Brown win, though, the GOP in Congress still is viewed by many as the party of obstruction rather than construction.
To get Congress back, the Republicans are going to have to come up with another Contract With America, such as that being proposed by former Rep. Newt Gingrich, who was largely responsible for the first Contract With America, which was credited with putting the GOP back in power in 1994.
In this new “contract,” Gingrich says the Republicans need to be for something in the 2010 election, and not just against the Democrats and their policies. “Part of the power of a contract strategy is that it forces Republicans to quit being an opposition party and enables them to become an alternative party,” he said.
And he is right. Republicans need to learn to say more than just “no.”
The GOP which professes to be a “big tent” political party despite apparently contrary evidence is seeking to co-opt the tea party for its own political advantage. You mark Michael Steele’s remark that (paraphrase) “we have to work in concert to shoot down Obama’s agenda.” Where are the proactive statements? How do you scale down the deficit by pruning taxes? How do you repair the health care issue? While I am very angry at dems in congress and, to a certain extent Obama and his advisors, for not being more aggressive in getting the facts out, I also think that while the repubs have gathered momentum by broad opposition the tide is about to turn. You have to promote ideas backed by verifiable information that are good for the country