Focusing on a new message

This past weekend the GOP witnessed this year's Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) with a host of speakers -- all big guns in the GOP -- including Governor Sarah Palin, Governor Bobby Jindal, Governor Haley Barbour, Governor Mitt Romney, Congressman JC Watts, and Senator Rick Santorum. While most of their addresses were short, sweet, and to the point, another speaker brought to the forefront a point the GOP absolutely needs to focus on. Newt Gingrich gave a superb address to the attendees, and he challenged the GOP to change its rhetoric. We shouldn't be the "Party of No." We should become the "Party of Yes:"

The first thing I want to ask you to do will sound a little academic, but it's really important in setting up the arguments for the next three years. I urge you to join me in talking about a secular socialist machine. It's important to be clear who these people are. They don't want to talk about it honestly and openly, but on every front, they're increasing government. On every front, they are trying to micromanage our lives. On every front, they want to raise taxes, spend more, have politicians become more powerful, and citizens become less powerful. And we need to make clear to the American people that this is not a normal series of elections. This is not two groups that share the same ideas and we're struggling over power. This is a fundamental fight over the core definition of America, and it is going to require us to talk, I think, in a very different language than normal politics.

I think it requires us to talk about the American culture, not American politics. Does the work ethic matter, or is redistribution the alternative? It's very central. Are we endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or does government define who we are? Just think about -- but I want you to think about the more we make this a choice about the nature of America, the weaker they are.

So, first, I'd like to ask you to think about this term. I spent several years trying to think through how to explain why is Sacramento such a mess, why is Albany such a mess, why is Washington following Sacramento and Albany, why has Detroit as a city been destroyed, what is it that's happened, and what's happened is that you've had a machine that has a set of values that are antithetical to creativity and productivity and the work ethic, and that machine exists for the purpose of taking away your money, controlling your life, and redistributing your goods to other people based on political whim. It's fundamentally wrong, and it's fundamentally the opposite of the American tradition.

The second thing I want you to think about is, frankly, even more unusual for American politics. I want to give you -- and I say this, having been Speaker of the House, having spent seven years working in the executive branch as a volunteer, having thought a long time about the nature of where we are. I think the most important governing slogan of the next 25 years is very simple and very different. It's "2+2=4."

Now, I got to this because two years ago, Callista and I made a movie called Ronald Reagan Rendezvous with Destiny, and in making the movie, we went to Gdansk, Poland, interviewed Lech Walesa who had been the leader of solidarity and the President of Poland, and then we went to Prague and the Czech Republic and interviewed Vaclav Haval, who had spent three years in a prison and then ended up as President of the new free Czechoslovakia.

Both men said to us the decisive moment in the emergence of freedom in Eastern Europe was a year before Reagan was elected. It was when Pope John Paul II took a nine-day pilgrimage and went to Poland, and in that nine days, over a third of the people of Poland came to see him physically. And so we decided to do a movie about it which is called Nine Days that Changes the World, which we are premiering tomorrow night at Mount Vernon, and it's about freedom through faith and how the two are totally related to each other.

And we have a Polish figure who was there in 1979 who said, "You know, we looked around at 3 million people in Warsaw, and we looked around and suddenly realized there are more of us than there are of the government. So why are we afraid of them?"

Now, solidarity went from 300, from 500 or 600 members to 10 million in a year. There was a constant tension, a constant struggle for 10 years, from June of 1979 when the Pope visited to June of 1989 when Poland had its first reelection, and within the two years, the Soviet Union disappeared. In that struggle, the Polish people came up with a slogan which they printed and they put in their windows. It was "2+2=4." Now, the Communist leadership knew that "2+2=4" was subversive.

But it was very tricky for them to go into a shop and say, "You really have to take that sign down," because it meant they were saying you couldn't say "2+2=4," which made them look just stupid. ...

Number three, this may be the biggest change, and we're going to need your help talking to every Republican candidate and every Republican incumbent and every Republican consultant. What the left wants to do -- I mean, they know they can't win a fight where they're honest about who they are, so they want to be dishonest about who we are. What the left wants to do is say, we're the Party of No, and, frankly, if you go through the legislative process and the setup and the fact that they only bring up their things and so the big votes are always on their things, so Republicans do vote no on their things because their things are really disastrous, you know, and then they say, "See, I told you they were the Party of No because look at all the no votes." ...

So here's what I want to ask you to encourage every candidate you know, every incumbent you know, every staff person you know, every consultant you know. I think we should decide we're going to be the Party of Yes, and we should say Republicans can say yes to a balanced budget through controlled spending. Republicans can say yes to more jobs through tax cuts. Republicans can say yes to balancing the Federal budget without a single penny of tax increase by reforming government. Republicans can say yes to stopping the crooks from taking money from Medicaid and Medicare.

Like or dislike the man, he's right. Instead of allowing the media or Democrats to dictate to us and the nation what conservatives stand for, WE need to be the ones to define ourselves. When "Tingles" Matthews or Keith Olberdouche sounds off on the GOP being against something, such as health care/health insurance reform, we need to fire back.

"No, we're not against it. We're against the ideas that Democrats have in taking over both industries. Here's what our ideas are to reduce the costs that the average American has to pay."

"We're not against taking care of the environment. We're for that, but we don't want the taxpayers getting hosed on a nutty scheme to keep us dependent on other nations, and not producing clean energy such as nuclear power."

"We're not against taxation because it's necessary for the federal government to run. However, the people don't need to deal with the tax burden they have, and government waste can be cut by cutting the size and scope of the federal government."

See, we're no longer the "Party of No. We're the "Party of Yes" and more importantly, we're the "Party of Ideas." During the entire time the health care debate was unfolding, Democrats continuously lied that we didn't have a plan of our own that was better. Yes we did, but thanks to their efforts to concoct a seizure scheme behind closed doors, with no input from Republicans, they controlled the debate. It also didn't help that the media was firmly entrenched on their side of the issue; continually mocking and slandering the GOP.

We do need to be the "Party of Yes," and if we adopt this idea -- confronting the machine in DC run by the Democrats with ideas, facts, and truth, which gives the American public a clear picture of the distinct differences between our parties -- we can finish off the Democrats. We can take the fight to them and defeat them.

This November, the voters are going to bounce the Democrats out of power in at least one House of Congress, and possibly both. But that doesn't end the fight. We need to take the fight to the president next, and make sure he is a one-term president. He appears to be a clone of Jimmy Carter, so it will fall to us to make sure history repeats itself, and we can't do that if we let that moron define us. We need to define him. We need to explain to the public just how dangerously radical his agenda is to this nation, and that we need to put an end to his tenure.

We can't do that by simply being opposed to what Democrats are hatching. We need to fight back against their machinations, present our ideas, and show America we are the party that stands for this nation, and all it entails and guarantees. Do I think the GOP has learned its lesson? I sure hope so because this nation cannot continue to survive with these monkeys at the helm of the ship hitting every iceberg in its path.

Publius II