I heard the Newt today, oh boy:

“Just look at what’s happening in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race,” he says, pointing to the campaign of independent candidate Chris Daggett, who has siphoned support from Republican candidate Chris Christie. “What’s happening in New York and in New Jersey should be a sober warning to every purist in this country.”

“If you seek to be a perfect minority, you’ll remain a minority,” says Gingrich. “That’s not how Reagan built his revolution or how we won back the House in 1994.”

What happened to the Newt Gingrich who called Bob Dole a “tax-collector for the Welfare State”?

Back then, Democrats would pass new spending programs without funding them (some things never change). Dole would come along and say: “Look at these awful deficits! I guess we’d better raise taxes.” Democrats would laugh all the way to the polls; they got credit for the spending and Republicans got blamed for the taxes…perfect! Then they would Lather, Rinse and Repeat.

Until Newt came along and called them out on it.

And I remember the ‘94 election a little differently; Bill Clinton overreached and Republicans offered a specific list of conservative principles and policies. They did not draft David Gergen. Now Obama has overreached and Republicans should…punt?

Reagan built his revolution by offering solid conservative principles and this; “Let Them Go Their Own Way”:

“…I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party” — when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.” Reagan said Republicans lost because “there was not a sufficient difference” between the two parties, not too much difference.

He asked

“Who has ever been barred from participating?”

That is, anyone was free to go to a Republican caucus and make their best case for their favorite policies, liberal or otherwise. But…

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.

In The New Republican Party, Reagan said

What I envision is not simply a melding together of the two branches [social and economic] of American conservatism into a temporary uneasy alliance, but the creation of a new, lasting majority.

This will mean compromise. But not a compromise of basic principle. What will emerge will be something new: something open and vital and dynamic, something the great conservative majority will recognize as its own, because at the heart of this undertaking is principled politics. …All too often in the press and the television evening news it is treated as a call for “ideological purity.”

I consider this to be the complete opposite to principled conservatism. If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism.

I do not view the new revitalized Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won’t associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles for the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists.

So far, so good for Dede (sorta). But then he says

Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let’s act and talk like it.

Picking a left-leaning Republican to run in an essentialy conservative district is playing it safe. It’s not acting like we’re a majority and it’s not how Reagan built his revolution and it’s not how we’ll win ours.