By John Biver
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been on TV a lot lately both commenting on President Obama's blunders and promoting the Tea Parties taking place all over the country on April 15th. Newt is eminently quotable – and here is one of my favorites from him:
“On the really big things it is repetition that matters. I think our leadership has to get back in the habit of understanding that if you truly want to have a dialog with America, with over 300 million Americans, you have to pick a handful of big ideas, you have to talk about them endlessly, and gradually, over time, you'll build an echo effect and a resonance and the country will learn and you'll have a genuine dialog.”
In the spirit of repetition, let me repeat what I wrote just yesterday: It's time for conservatives to take over the Republican Party.
I applaud the initiative that is going into the tea parties – but conservatives need to realize that it's more fun to win elections. That won't happen until we build a strong, principle-based political party that Americans find credible.
My colleague Cathy Santos has summed it up well by pointing out that not enough people are willing to do the hard work that is party politics. Think about it. People prefer the wonderland of think tanks. They enjoy Don Quixote-like ego-satisfying campaigns for high office that leave no lasting good in their wake. Or they prefer to join in the work of “issue advocacy,” which seldom secures substantial political ground.
With all due respect to those endeavors – Republicans are where they're at today in large part because conservatives choose to play pretend politics and ignore the battle to control the organization that controls the ballot line – the Grand Old Party.
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