Lessons Learned the Hard Way: on Principles & Values
GOP represents people, but Dems communicate better
Sometimes I think we conservative politicians forget how much the people “out there” are with us. The age of liberalism is over, and millions of Americans are calling on us to figure out how to replace it. We do in fact know how to do that, though people
go on needing to be convinced that there will be no unmanageable hardships for them concealed in our plans. They need to believe that we understand how people feel. This is sometimes an uncomfortable thing for Republicans to make convincing.
Often we tend to talk as if we are a group of managers analyzing some problem in a boardroom. Democrats, on the other hand, whatever their other shortcomings, have a passion for both power and people and instinctively know how to focus in on both.
You might say that they on the whole come on like a party of lawyers making an appeal to a blue-collar jury, while Republicans come on like a party of managers making an appeal to a board of directors. Guess who is more successful at mass communication?
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 40
Jul 2, 1998
Polls are biased left; GOP wins on the issues
There is another great source of liberal power, not quite the same thing as the press but working hand in hand with it--and that is news media public opinion polls. Polls can be manipulated: through the pools selected for polling and through the
wording of the questions. First of all, if you ask all adults rather than likely voters, your results will be skewed by the responses of people who are not interested in politics and will therefore be more likely simply to parrot
what they have picked up from television. The more likely you are to vote, the more likely you are to pay attention to the arguments. As we’ve lately been discovering, the more you pay attention to the arguments, the more likely you are to vote for us.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 73-75
Jul 2, 1998
Baby Boomers becoming Republicans while Dems become outdated
Republicans are riding a wave of generational change. Baby boomers and their children are growing more conservative & critical of government failure to deliver services to a standard comparable to those of the private sector. On their side, the Democrats
are being dragged downhill by a combination of their industrial-age institutions, such as the labor unions, government bureaucrats, & trial lawyers, and their ideological base groups, such as radical feminists, homosexual activists, & race politicians.
These all keep the Democratic Party committed to policies & institutions that often violate the public’s sense of decency & that cannot meet their demands for a dollar’s worth of government services for a dollar of taxes.Most of these trends are barel
noted in the media while they are happening, with the result that the view of the world that dominates in Washington and New York and Cambridge Mass, is almost 180 degrees different from the view of the world of everyday practical political leaders.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 78-79
Jul 2, 1998
Liberals exploit weakness; conservatives offer strength
We must expect liberals to continue to fight us, and where they do so honestly, to respect them for it while continuing to work for our success. If the conservative movement had survived LBJ & Watergate by assuring itself that values were more important
than popularity, we can expect the liberals to do no less. After all, they have something tempting to promise people that we do not, namely, the quick fix & the easy buck. Americans are especially tired of the oppressive politically correct culture that
has grown up around them. But it is well to remember that temptation is something ever lurking, waiting to exploit human weakness, especially in difficult times. What we have to offer people instead is strength and adventure, the experience of a new
level of life-enhancing energy and love of a great country. We have no reason to become distressed--as many members of the House did and as I at some point also did. What we are embarked on is what they call steady work, more than enough for a lifetime.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 82-83
Jul 2, 1998
Page last updated: Feb 25, 2019