Peter Ferrara: "Redeeming Newt"

From his article in The American Spectator:

Newt Gingrich is so right in urging his own "Leadership Now" theme for the Republican House majority. He argues that the House should not wait for the debt reduction Super Committee before passing legislation to address federal spending, the deficit, economic growth, and jobs. The House should show leadership now by passing legislation that will achieve these goals most effectively, demonstrating to the public what conservative Republican victories in the elections next year would accomplish.

On block-granting Medicaid:

Gingrich raises a popular entitlement reform opportunity based on the enormously successful 1996 reforms of the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), enacted while Gingrich was Speaker of the House.

Those reforms sent the federal financing for the program back to the states in fixed, finite block grants, with states empowered to redesign new welfare programs for the poor -- based on work. If a state's program cost more than its federal allotment, then it had to pay all of the extra costs itself. If its program cost lest, then it could keep the resulting savings.

With new incentives for the states, two-thirds of those on AFDC left the program for real private sector jobs. Their incomes rose by at least one fourth as a result, leading them out of poverty. And costs for the taxpayers dropped by half or more in real dollars compared to prior trends.

Those same reforms can and should be extended to Medicaid and all other federal means-tested welfare programs. Those programs are estimated to cost $10 trillion in total government spending over the next 10 years. The Republican House should act now to pass legislation effectively sending all those programs back to the states with block grants providing the discretion for the states to each enact a completely new welfare system based on work, as Gingrich suggested. That kind of Tea Party federalism would be enormously popular, as would the potential savings of $5 trillion over 10 years. Based on the 1996 reforms of AFDC, the poor would benefit enormously as well.

On energy and federal land:

Gingrich also proposes legislation to increase revenue from oil and gas exploration and drilling through sharply increased federal leases and permits. That could raise $150 billion over roughly 10 years, with more coming from increased economic growth due to more abundant supplies of low cost energy for businesses. Gingrich also proposes to sell federally owned land and other unused and environmentally insignificant federal assets.

Lean Six Sigma:

Gingrich is also pioneering the application of proven business efficiency and waste cutting methodologies known as Lean Six Sigma to government programs and agencies. Instead of waiting for the dangerously centralized Super Committee to develop plans for remaking the entire federal government, Gingrich argues that all 435 members of the House in almost 200 committees and subcommittees should be involved in developing ways to apply Lean Six Sigma business principles to government management, with potential cost savings of over $5 trillion. Gingrich argues that another $700 billion to $1.2 trillion over 10 years could be realized by applying the fraud detection techniques utilized by credit card companies to root out fraud in Medicare and Medicaid.

Ferrara concludes:

If the Republican House can act expeditiously to pass all of these ideas, and send them on to the do-nothing Democrat Senate, then Republicans can take these issues to the people next year, clearly defined.

And they can thank Newt Gingrich​ for many of them.

I have wrote about Ferrara's praise for Newt's ideas here and here.

Newt: "I actually think ideas matter."

Newt sat down with the editorial board of the Marietta Daily-Journal last Thursday. It is too long to post even a majority of the interview, I will post quite a bit. Here is the full article.

On false, ugly rumors about him:

"I think you tell them the truth," Gingrich said. "And you say, 'I've done things in my life that I've had to reconcile with God and seek forgiveness for, and that's a fact. And I have a very strong marriage. I'm very close to both my daughters. I'm very close to both my grandchildren, close to my two son-in-laws.'"

Gingrich, who represented Georgia's Sixth District from 1979 to 1999 as a Republican U.S. congressman and served as House Speaker from 1995 to 1999, recalled a campaign he went through in Georgia.

"We had a candidate who was attacking me about family and my younger daughter did a commercial and just said, 'it's not true and it's not accurate.' I mean, the worst things said about me are simply not true, and I think both of my daughters are quite prepared to say those things are not true. Now, that means people attacking me aren't going to have a fight with me, they're now going to have to have a fight with Jackie and Kathy, and I think that becomes pretty convincing for people."

On his campaign:

Gingrich blamed the "elite media" for why his campaign had trouble getting traction.

"If you look at the news media coverage, the elite media went out of their way for seven or eight weeks to attack me," Gingrich said. "You had day after day people saying, 'well, his campaign's dead. He's gone. It's over.'"

He recalled a week where he campaigned at various town hall meetings in Iowa, each with a bigger crowd than expected.

"So I'm having a great time," Gingrich said. "Meanwhile, every night on every talk show various analysts, none of whom have been in Iowa, are all going, 'well, Gingrich is gone.' What that really did was is it affected our fundraising very dramatically, didn't affect voters, but it affected our fundraising very dramatically."

Gingrich referred to a news article that did an analysis of Twitter followers.

"And it says, 'now it's true that Gingrich has 1.3 million followers and (Michele) Bachmann only has 59,000, but she's getting more new people every week.' It turned out I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn't count because if it counted I'd still be a candidate; since I can't be a candidate that can't count. So we've been a little bit like a sailing ship in the middle of a hurricane in which we are sailing straight into the teeth of the media, and that slowed us down."

Using political consultants, he said, was a mistake.

"And it was a serious mistake. Reagan did the same thing, and in 1980 in New Hampshire 13 senior staff resigned on the morning of the New Hampshire primary, including the manager and the top people. He brought in Bill Casey who was not a consultant; he was a top lawyer. Two weeks later Casey laid off 100 people. And I look back and in retrospect this was just a mistake on my part," he said.

In both the Reagan campaign and Gingrich's Contract with America, ideas were central but slow to mature. Reagan, for instance, didn't dramatically pull away from Jimmy Carter until the October debate, he said.

"What I say to conservatives is very simple. The first is it's October of 2012. Obama has a billion dollars to spend on lies designed to destroy the Republican candidate. The key is going to be the debates. Because the whole country will watch. And they'll either conclude as they did in 1980, remember, 'there you go again,' and they said, 'yep, got it,' and Ronald Reagan carried more states than FDR did in 1932. So who do you want to have on the platform with Obama? Who do you think can look him in the eye and have both the skill and the nerve for example to say, 'Mr. Obama, you have been terrific with food stamps, but that's not good enough for America.' Because if you don't have the nerve to say that you're not going to cut through the billion dollars of advertising."

On polling and the ability of the Internet:

Gingrich cited a Gallup poll that placed him fourth.

"And nobody is first by any big margin," he said. "The front runner who has the most money after five years of campaigning is at I think 19 percent and the 19 percent's not hard. When they did a poll recently in New Hampshire, and they said, 'Are you certain who you're going to vote for?' ten percent of the people said 'yes.' I mean, 90 percent of the people said, 'well, I'm not really sure,' so I start with the idea that this is a much more open race than people think it is, and it's a long way until the first delegates are picked in January. ... I believe if this was not a serious time I would have no hope. I believe this is such a serious time and Americans know it's such a serious time that they're going to look for a serious leader, so I think the talking points and the clever ads and the gimmicks are all going to disappear in the next five months."

The former speaker predicted he could win the nomination for under $20 million. The other day someone reminded him that former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue won the primary for under $250,000.

"People overvalue money and undervalue ideas. That's part of the core gamble of this campaign. I actually think ideas matter. I also think the Internet is such a collapser of cost. I mean, it's actually pretty ironic; one of the complaints the consultant said was that we were spending too much money. The day they left our budget collapsed dramatically, and we've actually raised more than we've spent every single week since they left ..."

Gingrich said he's running for president because the country is faced with three catastrophes coming down the road, one involving China, one involving the loss of American identity and one involving the Middle East.

If the U.S. doesn't fix its manufacturing, science and technological pattern the Chinese will be the leading country in the world, he said.

"And if they both own trillions of dollars of our debt, and they have a superior manufacturing system and a superior military, then our range of independence will be within the framework the Chinese tolerate," Gingrich said. "Now, I don't find that to be a very acceptable future. So I think you've got to rebuild our science, technology and manufacturing base in order to be able to rebuild our military with the recapitalization, and I think if you don't do that we will cease to be the most significant country on the planet, and it will literally dramatically limit our freedom."

Regarding the Middle East, Gingrich referenced a conference Iran held on terrorism.

"Now this is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world holding a conference on terrorism," Gingrich said. "Sixty countries went to the conference. The Secretary General sent a special envoy. Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan were at the conference. Now this means that after thousands of dead Americans, billions of American dollars, the two countries we've tried to help both thought it was better to irritate us than to irritate the Iranians. Now I don't think anybody in the Obama White House has a clue what that meant or how dangerous that is."

The first step is to recognize that radical Islam is real, large and sincere, he said. Moreover, a large part of the Pakistani government was protecting Osama bin Laden.

"If you had asked me - and I have a fair amount of knowledge about intelligence. I have fairly good ties to the Agency and the NSA - if you had asked me up until the week before we went in, I would have said to you, 'he's in a cave in Waziristan.' And if you had said to me, 'oh no, he is in a military city one mile from the national defense university, I would have said to you, 'that means a big chunk of the Pakistani government is protecting him. And that's a problem on a grand scale."

The problem is made all the more complicated with Pakistan harboring perhaps a hundred nuclear weapons, a few of which could be leaked to terrorists, he said.

What is needed is a fundamental overhaul of the U.S. intelligence laws to allow U.S. intelligence agencies to go back to spy work, he said.

"Because we today are so crippled by these various so-called reforms that we don't do spying. We rely on the Pakistanis to give us intelligence. Well, you just learned that the Pakistani intelligence system is on the other team."

On the home front, Gingrich called on the repeal of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which "is to financial services what Obamacare is to health."

He called on reforming the Food and Drug Administration to move new knowledge from the laboratory to the patient as rapidly as possible.

"Today you have an adversarial FDA which is killing the American health industry and driving jobs offshore, while killing patients by slowing down moving new things," he said.

He wants to replace the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with an agency that values economics and cooperates with rather than dictates to local communities.

"You got to replace it because the current bureaucrats at EPA hate business, hate local communities and are destructive of the American future," he said.

Gingrich ripped Obama's energy policy.

"We're the third largest oil producing country in the world," he said. "We have more hydro-carbon than any country in the world. Do you know how bad your government has to be to artificially create these shortages? It's maniacal. So one of the ads we're going to use next year is Obama in Brazil saying, 'I'm glad you're drilling offshore. We'd like to be your best customer.' And I'm going to say, 'there's a simple choice: everybody who thinks the American president should be a purchasing agent for foreigners, you want Obama. Everybody who thinks we ought to be salesmen for Americans, you're for me.'"

Newt answering a question in Iowa about energy

Link.

Newt campaigning in New Hampshire

Newt was in New Hampshire today and said he will "doing a lot of grassroots things and developing a lot of ideas" over the next few months.

From The Boston Globe:

Gingrich is spending today and tomorrow in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and has six radio show appearances lined up. His only publicized New Hampshire campaign stop with any voter contact was a tour of Spectrum Marketing Companies, a direct mail and marketing company whose clients include numerous Republican politicians.

Spokesman R.C. Hammond said Gingrich may do another business visit tomorrow. Otherwise, Gingrich is meeting privately with activists and business leaders. He said he met voters at a diner this morning.

...

Asked about Gingrich’s grassroots activism, Hammond pointed to public events Gingrich did on previous trips, including a town hall meeting on health care in Derry, a meeting with Tea Party activists in Dover, and a meet and greet at a Conway cafe.

More from Shira Schoenberg:

"The difference in substance and difference in experience will make a difference by January," Gingrich told reporters in Manchester. He pledged, "You'll see me here a lot just as you’ll see me in Iowa a lot."

Gingrich said he believes he will attract support from the Tea Party through a "10th amendment enforcement act." Hammond said that refers to an initiative to have citizens identify areas like education or health care where the federal government is overreaching. Republicans promoted a similar concept in 1996, when Gingrich was speaker, through legislation ensuring the federal government does not infringe on states’ rights.

Gingrich also suggested health initiatives focusing on brain science, regenerative medicine, and diabetes. He has said Congress should repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, President Obama’s reform of the financial industry.

"I'll rely on a strategy of substance and the notion that this country is in very deep trouble," Gingrich said. He pointed specifically to the problems of China outpacing the United States in science, technology, and manufacturing; the erosion of American exceptionalism; and the lack of a strategy for dealing with radical Islam. He said Washington has failed to solve the economic problems, and "there"s a very real danger we’re going to have a second dip" of the recession.

In the current impasse between President Obama and Congress over raising the debt ceiling, Gingrich said House Republicans are missing an opportunity to pass numerous potential solutions and force Senate Democrats to vote on them. Gingrich proposed increasing oil and gas exploration offshore and on federal lands, and raising the debt ceiling by $200 billion in exchange for getting that additional revenue.

"They have every right to say to the president 'here are five different ways of solving the problem, are you going to force America to default?' " Gingrich said. "If you are, we’ll have the Obama depression plus the Obama default."

Newt on an American Energy plan

Link.


Newt will be on the Tea Party Bus Tour tomorrow morning in Iowa.

Human Events: "Why Newt Gingrich Will Be a Formidable Contender"

Tony Lee, who is covering the 2012 Presidential election for the conservative newspaper Human Events, wrote an article touting Newt's "politics, policy, and publicity."

"Last week, Newt Gingrich showed why he will be a more than formidable candidate," Lee wrote. "During a series of events, he displayed how he can combine politics, policy, and publicity to leverage his ideas and brand."

Lee then recaps Newt's week. It started with a tele-townhall with Tea Party groups in which "Gingrich showed his depth and range on a variety of issues ranging from immigration, to allowing people to opt-in to a flat tax rate, to criticizing President Obama for seemingly caring more about offshore drilling in Brazil than in America."

Then he called on George Washington University to invite Paul Ryan to give a response to President Obama's speech in which he attacked Ryan after inviting the Wisconsin Republican to it.

Newt told CNBC host Larry Kudlow that he would not reappoint Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In front of Tea Party groups in Charleston, South Carolina, Newt ran through what his energy policy would look like:

1) Replace the Environmental Protection Agency, which has become a job-killing regulatory engine of higher energy prices, with an Environmental Solutions Agency that would work cooperatively with local government and industry to achieve better environmental outcomes while considering the impact of federal environmental policies on job creation and the cost of energy.

2) End the ban on oil shale development in the American West, where we have three times the amount oil as Saudi Arabia.

3) Give coastal states federal royalty revenue sharing so that state’s budgets directly benefits from offshore development.

4) Enact a loser-pays law to force the losers in environmental lawsuits to pay all legal costs for the prevailing side, which will reduce frivolous lawsuits that are employed simply to stop energy production.

5) Finance cleaner energy research and projects with new oil and gas royalties.

6) Appoint a commission of engineers and scientists, not politicians, to study the damaged nuclear reactor in Japan and determine if any changes need to be made to US nuclear power standards.

Gingrich wrapped up his week at the Brookings Institution ,at which he gave a detailed speech about health care policy.

Lee concludes:

When on his A-game, Gingrich is an intellectual force and heavyweight who knows how to market his ideas in a compelling way that is understandable by the general public. Gingrich is also savvy and nimble in framing how his ideas can be solutions for contemporary problems that the country faces at the moment.

The more the 2012 contest is focused on wonkish policy, Gingrich will have more of a homecourt advantage and the better off he will be.

Lee's point about Newt being able to market his ideas is an important one. He not only is the best ideas man in the party; he also is the one who comes up with such slogans as "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less."

Newt's day in New Hampshire talking with tea party and local GOP groups

Yesterday, Newt met with "[a]bout 15 people" affiliated with tea party and GOP groups in New Hampshire at the Orchard Street Chop House -- a local steakhouse -- and the topics discussed included energy policy and balancing the federal budget.

Newt criticized the current administration's policy of restricting American energy -- while at the same time subsidizing foreign exploration. "Obama praises Brazilians for drilling offshore but stops Americans," the former Speaker said. "We need an American energy policy."

Jennifer Keefe writes:

But foremost on the minds of those in attendance was the need for balancing the federal budget and tackling the country's deficit — tasks Gingrich said are completely possible because he was responsible for doing just that as Speaker of the House under former President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1999.

"We've got to go back to a balanced budget. We didn't raise taxes, we cut taxes," he said of his tenure as speaker. "We wanted to create jobs. I'm the only speaker of the house to balance the budget."

...

Gingrich echoed the conservative principals of those Tea Party activists in attendance as he denounced the Department of Education as a "centralized bureaucracy" and said power should be given back to the parents. In general, he said, power should be in the hands of local school boards and county officials.

(Another article about the meeting says that Newt called for the abolition of the Department of Education.)

As Newt likes to do, he talked of the larger conservative movement, not -- as most candidates do -- just his campaign:

[Gingrich] said he would be a presidential candidate whose mission is not just to win, but to initiate a political movement and really create a different model.

"An aggressive, confident president who knows what they were doing could get a lot accomplished in a short time," he said.

"Gingrich said the next presidential election will be decided on three issues: values, economics and national security," writes Clynton Namuo. Gingrich added that currently America is failing in all three areas.

This meeting is another example of Newt courting local tea party groups.

Newt's "10 Steps to a Stable Governing Majority"

From his weekly newsletter:

1. Do not focus on November 2012. Instead, focus on January 2021. The goal between now and January 2021 should be to govern so well, communicate so clearly, and include Americans from all backgrounds so consistently that a second wave of House Republicans will be sworn into office in January 2021 to build a better future around our values and principles.

2. Fight for the values of the American people. Set up a series of choices in which you are defending the values and beliefs of the vast majority of American and the Democrats are defending those of the Washington establishment and left-wing elite.

3. American Exceptionalism Matters. Americans overwhelmingly believe America is an exceptional country. Yet President Obama and many Democrats seem intent on denying it. This has clear implications for policy debates, which can be framed around the historic American habits and principles that are the source of our exceptionalism.

4. Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less. Americans want an American energy policy (see our work at American Solutions) while Obama wants to borrow from the Chinese to buy oil from the Brazilians. An American energy plan from the House GOP would create a clear policy choice and put Republicans on the side of the American people.

5. Focus on Communication. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a rule: "First you win the argument then you win the vote." In the end, having the right policies won't matter if you fail to communicate them effectively. The budget debate will be an example of where this is essential.

6. Inclusion, not outreach. Outreach is when insiders make a decision and then start calling people to tell them what it is. Inclusion is when they are in the room to discuss the challenges and help reach the decisions. Inclusion will require deep changes in scheduling, staffing, internships, communications, and networking.

7. Be smart, not cheap. Get to a balanced budget by being smart rather than cheap. Cutting spending in areas that produce long term savings, such as the National Institutes of Health is destructive to the goal of a sustainable, balanced budget.

8. Boldness will be rewarded. House Republicans should consider it their duty to pass the changes America needs and rally the American people to put pressure on the 23 Democratic Senate seats and the Democratic president. The country will only understand the need to replace Democrats in the Senate and the White House if they see House Republicans offering bold solutions. House GOP timidity would lead the tea parties and activists (including talk radio) to focus their frustration on House Republicans. Boldness will convince them to focus on Democratic opposition to our solutions.

9. A Contract with America in 2012. Begin now to develop bold proposals for a 2012 Contract with America including a Tenth Amendment implementation bill and a job creation bill, featuring tax cuts, deregulation, litigation reform, and American energy development. The American people need to see what a Republican team would be like so they have a lot of reasons to give us 40 more House seats, a dozen Senate seats and the White House.

10. Cheerful persistence will be the key habit for success. There will inevitably be tension, arguments, frustrations and internal dissent and conflict. Working through issues with the leadership so a unified Republican team can be creative and effective will take enormous patience and persistence. It is best done cheerfully.

Newt also mentions that the Gingrich Foundation is honoring the Autism Society this month.

Newt responds to CPAC critics

From his weekly newsletter:

During my speech to CPAC, I tried to lay out a substantive and compelling alternative to Obama and the Democrat's left wing governance, focusing on American energy and environmental policies. I proposed an aggressive, all-American energy strategy that would dramatically boost all sources of energy production in our country.

I also proposed replacing the Environmental Protection Agency with a new Environmental Solutions Agency which would focus on technological solutions to our environmental challenges and adopt a collaborative approach with business and local government, instead of the command and control regulatory model of the EPA.

...

The record crowd of over 11,000 attendees reacted strongly to this vision for lower energy prices, more jobs, better environmental outcomes and a safer America.

It was clear watching the crowd's reaction to my speech and the speeches of others that the conservative movement is energized by the possibility of winning an epic election in 2012. It's also clear they expect real conservative reform from a new conservative president and Congress.

Maybe that optimism and energy made some people nervous.

Before the event was even over, the mainstream media was hard at work trying to pour cold water on the fire that has been lit across this nation.

This article from the Associated Press sums up the doubt and skepticism that so many in our elite media seem intent on sewing amongst the American people.

The not-too-subtle message from these guardians against high expectations is crystal clear: Don't get your hopes up. Real change isn't possible in America. You might as well stay home.

In fact, this piece of conventional wisdom is both historically wrong and insidious.

History shows that real change is possible, but only if the American people are informed and engaged.

He then cites Ronald Reagan and the 1994 victory he led as "successful conservative reform[s]" that succeeded "because they understood that real power resides with the American people, not in Washington."

This rule was described to me by an associate of Reagan's as, 'I show the American people the light. They turn up the heat on Congress.'

Ronald Reagan was known as the Great Communicator, but he can better be understood as a great educator. He thought that if he could use his platform as a national figure to inform the American people, they would provide the pressure to implement conservative reform.

That's how Ronald Reagan was able to cut taxes, reduce spending, and reform burdensome regulations to revive the American economy despite having to deal with a Democratic Congress that was opposed to his agenda. Reagan understood that the American people would pressure the Congress into doing the right thing. All Reagan had to do was champion policies that reflect American values and treat the American people with respect by being honest and clear about the facts.

...

Similarly, when I was Speaker, the Republican Congress was able to achieve its principal goals despite having to work with a liberal Democratic President. We balanced the budget while cutting taxes and increasing military and defense spending. It is a historic fact that Clinton never proposed a balanced budget. It was the Republican House that made it happen.

...

All this was possible because we understood that President Clinton would eventually yield to the demands of the American people. That's why after twice vetoing another one of our principal goals, welfare reform, Clinton eventually signed it in 1996, before he ran for reelection. He knew he wouldn't be able to stand the heat from the American people if he didn't.

He then discusses the campaigns that preceded those two conservative reforms:

Ronald Reagan and the Republican Congress under my Speakership also delivered on our goals because the preceding election campaigns focused on the issues, not on personalities.

In 1980, Reagan offered a bold, competing vision for America's future that outshone the malaise and weakness of Jimmy Carter. He promised to cut taxes to boost economic growth, to renew America's strength in the world by standing up to the Soviet Union, and to restore America's civic confidence in its founding and unique purpose (American exceptionalism).

With a weak economy and the hostage crisis in Iran in 1980, Reagan could have simply run as 'not Carter' and emerged victorious. But then he would not have had a mandate to govern, and would never have been able to achieve his principal goals.

Similarly, in 1994, we explicitly crafted the Contract with America campaign around conservative reforms that we understood had overwhelming support in America (if not in the editorial pages of the NY Times) but had nonetheless been blocked by the Democratic House.

Consequently, despite having a liberal Democrat in the White House, we still managed to achieve a balanced budget, welfare reform, tax cuts, increased military and defense spending, and more.

Perhaps Republicans could have won control of the House in 1994 by simply running against Clinton. However, the Republican landslide would not have been as large, and we certainly would not have had the mandate necessary to enact real change.

As he has in the past, Gingrich criticized the 2004 Bush re-election effort for not engaging John Kerry on the issues:

I wrote a white paper in 2004 pointing out that on over 70 key issues, John Kerry was on the wrong side of public opinion by larger than a 70-30 margin. An election campaign run on these issues would put John Kerry at an impossible disadvantage and could have led to a landslide result with a true mandate for President Bush to govern.

However, the choice in the minds of most American voters in the fall of 2004 wasn't over two competing visions for America; it was between forged National Guard papers and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth commercials. Accordingly, more people turned out to vote against John Kerry than to vote against George W. Bush. With no mandate to govern, is it any wonder that Bush's subsequent attempt to reform social security was dead on arrival?

Newt similarly attacks the 2008 McCain team that did not show how radical then-candidate Obama was.

Looking forward:

We will need candidates that have a clear and substantive plan to govern and who can explain conservative solutions to the American people in a way that gets them excited and engaged.

We will need a new Contract with America in 2012.

A new Contract with America with specific, substantive, conservative solutions to the great challenges facing our nation is the only way to gain the mandate from the American people needed to bust through all the embedded interests in Washington and the state capitals that will oppose change.

If a new conservative President and Congress develop and win based off of a new Contract with America in 2012, there is nothing that can stand in the way of true conservative reforms that will create jobs, make America safer, and maximize individual freedom and dignity for all Americans.