40th Conservative Political Action Conference  ...Next >
March 16, 2013--In her introduction of her husband, Callista Gingrich outlined the Gingrichs' activities since the campaign.  She noted that three of Gingrich Productions' documentary films (produced in partnership with Citizens United) were showing at CPAC, and said that she and Newt would be introducing America at Risk later in the afternoon.  Further she said, they are working on a new documentary, God Loves You: The Life of Billy Graham.  She also put in a pitch for her upcoming children's book Yankee Doodle Dandy (Oct. 2013) "featuring a time travelling pachyderm named Ellis the elephant, who rumor has it will be here later this morning."  She said her husband is writing another book as well, this one "about the pioneers of the future who improve our lives and the prisoner of the past who seem to dominated Washington."  He is also continuing to develop Newt University courses.  >
Ever one to think on a grand scale, Gingrich declared,

"We're in a 50-year struggle for the conservative movement and the Republican party.  Let me be clear.  The Republican establishment is just plain wrong about how it approaches politics.  The Republican consulting class is just plain wrong about how it approaches politics." 

Gingrich said of the RNC report due out Monday,

"That report will be important first step, but I want to emphasize it's a first step.  The changes we need are vastly bigger and vastly deeper."

After quoting Lincoln, Gingrich said,

"We have to disenthrall ourselves of the establishment's anti-idea approach.  We must disenthrall ourselves from an accountant, green-eyeshades approach to thinking about budgets.  We must disenthrall ourselves from a consultant culture which believes politics can be reduced to raising money to run ads to attack somebody. 

"Now you're going to hear a false attack that we don't need new ideas.  Let me draw a distinction.  We don't need new principles, but we need lots of ideas about how to implement those principles in the 21st century, and you just heard Gov. Walker give you some examples."

Gingrich brought a candle and a light-bulb to demonstrate the scope of the changes. 

"The whole of Washington, in both parties, are prisoners of the past.  They are trapped into the ideas, the technology, the mindset--they fight over how to redistribute.  On the right we redistribute by cutting taxes; on the left we redistribute by having bigger bureaucracy, but they're all trapped in the age of candles..."

"The best single book on moving out of bureaucracy into a Tocquevillian society where you the citizen are empowered to solve your own problems--this tells you a lot about where we are in the Republican party--the best single book is by Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco and lieutenant governor of California, it's called Citizenvlle, and every single conservative in this country should read it because it is a practical textbook on all the opportunities in the information age to get rid of government and replace it with citizen activism exactly in the Tocquevillian model."

Gingrich cited Ronald Reagan's 1975 CPAC bold colors speech and two 1976 essays by Irving Kristol ("The Stupid Party" and "The Republican Future"), and he called for a fight not over numbers, but a fight over values.

"There is no red and there is no blue; there are 311 million Americans who deserve a party that wants every one of them to have a dramatically better future, and that ought to be the Republican party.  We are not the anti-Obama movement.  We are for a better American future with greater safety, freedom and prosperity for all."
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