Gingrich to GOP: Follow France

[Janett_Reno]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...9-raasch_N.htm

Newt Gingrich has seen the future of the Republican Party, and it is in France.
The former House speaker and leader of the Republicans' 1994 "Contract with America" has been hitting the talk show and Internet circuit with this message: Republicans will retain the White House in 2008 only if they copy conservative Nicolas Sarkozy's victory strategy in France — circumventing the traditional media, running as agents of bold change and cornering Democrats as protectors of the status quo.

Sarkozy, a one-time protege of then-French President Jacques Chirac, decisively won in May by advocating tougher law enforcement, tax cuts and work incentives in a country of 35-hour work weeks and summer-long vacations. Sarkozy portrayed Socialist Segolene Royal as a defender of a failed status quo, even though it was Chirac who had presided over a stagnating French economy and religious-tinged civil unrest.

"President Chirac was a center-right president for 12 years," Gingrich said Tuesday at the National Press Club. "He was in relatively deep trouble, not quite as much trouble as George W. Bush is. By any normal political science model, the Socialist should have won the election."

But, Gingrich said, "If one of the Republican candidates figures this out, they will frankly win the election next year."

Sarkozy, he said, did two important things.

First, Sarkozy established 16 Internet channels that were like YouTube and rigorously avoided trying to communicate through the French media, which Gingrich defined as hostile to conservatives.

"What (Sarkozy) said is, 'If I can communicate with you, then the news media can watch our conversation,' which is very different than having a conversation with the news media which (average people) watch," Gingrich said.

"The second thing is he made a very important speech where he said we must have a clean break" from Chirac, Gingrich said. "And I would say to (Republican) candidates, there is a lot of parallel there."

Gingrich used education as an example, asserting Republicans can win by advocating bold changes and framing failing schools as economic and national security issues. Gingrich said Democrats are too beholden to teachers' unions to match that argument.

Even if Gingrich is correct, 2008 is a very high mountain for the GOP. The war in Iraq has gone longer than World War II with little evidence that the Iraqi government could quickly secure peace and stability in a post-U.S. occupation, tarnishing George W. Bush's leadership and political power. Unless perceptions drastically change, any Republican nominee would start out on the defensive over Iraq simply because of party affiliation.

Gingrich said he may yet run for president if, after a late September "American Solutions" online conference, there is a groundswell for him.

"I believe the challenges we face as a country are larger than the Cold War, larger than the Second World War, larger than the Great Depression," he told his National Press Club audience.

According to Gingrich, threats include:

• Economic competition from emerging giants China and India in an era when U.S. schools are not preparing nearly enough young Americans for a global economy.

• A government bureaucracy that does not work in an era when rapid response, consumer satisfaction and technical efficiency separate haves from have-nots. "In less than four years, we defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan," Gingrich said. "Today, it takes 23 years to add a fifth runway to the Atlanta airport."

• A nuclear-armed Iran, led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who Gingrich asserts would readily trade the destruction of Tel Aviv for that of Tehran because "he believes everyone in Tehran goes to heaven and everyone in Tel Aviv doesn't."

• A terrorist weapon wiping out an American city. Gingrich said Americans are "sleepwalking" through the threat, and that no leader — here or abroad — has adequately framed it or condemned the tactics of Islamic terrorists or their political allies.

"When you see the Taliban kidnap 22 Christian South Korean missionaries who are there to help the people of Afghanistan — and nobody gets up and says this is despicable? Where in the Muslim world has there been any battle cry saying they should be released? When you see a 12-year-old boy in Pakistan saw off a man's head on videotape, where is the condemnation?"

Gingrich added: "Those of you who care about civil liberties had better be thinking about how we win this war before the casualties get so great that the American people voluntarily give up a lot of those liberties."