I wanted to share with you the following memo which I have written at
the request of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus,
and which he has distributed to RNC members this afternoon.
This is the beginning of a four to six month project considering what
the Republican Party must do to become competitive in all 50 states.
THE CHALLENGE CONFRONTING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
Newt Gingrich
December 2012
To Chairman Reince Priebus:
Thank you for inviting me to present an analysis for the Republican
National Committee about the current challenges Republicans face at
every level.
Our working together goes all the way back to your early years in
politics. I enjoyed doing events with you in Wisconsin and admired the
work you did in helping Scott Walker become Governor.
I was delighted when you became RNC Chairman and I know how much you
accomplished in the last two years rebuilding RNC finances and
developing a better ground game.
Your creation of the Growth and Opportunity Project chaired by Henry
Barbour is a very important step toward assessing what we have to learn
from 2012 and what we have to do to succeed in 2014 and 2016.
I look forward to working with Henry and his team and hope this paper
provides some useful thoughts about both the GOP's past record of
responding successfully to election challenges and to the changing
nature of American society and politics.
Reforming the Republican Party so it can create a governing majority
is an enormous challenge which includes every element of the party.
However as you have observed the RNC has a key role to play in bringing
together the ideas and the critiques and helping shape a clear vision of
a successful GOP.
I begin with three famous quotes about solving problems.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
different results," Albert Einstein.
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used
when we created them.” Einstein
"When I couldn't solve a problem I would always make it bigger until
I could find the solution. I never solved it by making it smaller,"
President and General of the Armies Dwight Eisenhower on problem solving
in World War Two.
PROPOSITION
The scale of strategic thinking Republicans need is vastly larger and
deeper than any current proposal recognizes. The Republican National
Committee will play a particularly important role in gathering
information, encouraging analysis, hosting dialogues about key changes,
and helping implement strategies for victory in 2014 and 2016.
This will require a deep, bold, thorough, and lengthy process of
rethinking.
I was so shaken by how wrong I was in projecting a Republican win on
election night that I have personally set aside time at Gingrich
Productions to spend the next six months with our team methodically
examining where we are and what we must do.
In that context I was delighted when you appointed a distinguished
team to lead the analysis for the Republican National Committee. I
appreciate your invitation to work directly with them on a process that
will be important to the entire Republican Party and ultimately to the
country.
This paper is a step in that direction.
This initial analysis is direct, tough minded, and daunting.
As you recognize, the Republican National Committee is not merely the
junior partner of whoever becomes the next presidential nominee.
The Republican NATIONAL Committee has a key role to play in every
level of party activity including Congress, Governors, state legislators
and local offices and activists.
That key role has often led to profound improvements in the GOP at a
time of electoral disaster.
THE RNC ROLE IN KEY PERIODS OF CHANGE
The RNC has historically played a very important role in recognizing
new realities and developing new strategies and new structures.
After the disastrous collapse of the GOP in 1964 Chairman Ray Bliss
played a decisive role in rebuilding the party structure. Within two
years President Lyndon Johnson had created such a mess and Republicans
had rebuilt so rapidly that the GOP won decisive victories for Congress
and for Governorships.
After the devastating Watergate defeat of 1974 Chairwoman Mary Louise
Smith led a courageous rethinking of the party's strategies and
structures. Her Executive Director, Eddie Mahe, undertook an exhaustive
in depth look at a party which had dropped to 18% support among the
American people( the lowest since the Great Depression).
In 1977 Chairman Bill Brock built on that rethinking. He backed
Congressman Jack Kemp's concept of supply side tax cutting to create
economic growth. In 1978 Brock paid for the "tax cut clipper" to fly
Kemp and Senator Roth around the country. This was a very courageous
step because many establishment Republicans ridiculed Kemp's ideas and
opposed his bill. Even when Reagan adopted it in the campaign it was
derided as voodoo economics by some Republicans).
I campaigned on supply side tax cuts and won a House seat in 1978
after losing in 1974 and 1976. I know Kemp's ideas made a big
difference.
Brock invested heavily in party structure and in ideas. After
Margaret Thatcher won the May, 1979 election, Brock brought her
advertising team to the United Stares and we studied intensely how they
had communicated complex ideas in simple, vivid language. I was honored
as a freshman to be part of that group and I know it disseminated a new
wave of ideas that along with Reagan's adoption of them shaped the GOP
for a generation.
After the 1992 defeat Chairman Haley Barbour was decisive in renewing
enthusiasm, raising resources, and helping shape and implement strategy.
Without Haley's help we would not have had a Contract with America,
would not have won the first House GOP majority in 40 years or
re-elected it for the first time since 1928 in 1996.
Your leadership in creating the Growth and Opportunity Project sets
the stage for exactly that kind of decisive impact over the next few
years.
OUR CHALLENGE
There will be forces urging The Growth and Opportunity Project to
develop a shallow, quick fix, small change approach to our current
challenges.
There are very powerful, well connected, and prestigious forces who
have made a lot of money out of the old system and have a huge interest
in keeping it intact. It may be bad for the GOP but it is good for them.
There are a number of influential people who are simply uncomfortable
trying to think through fundamental change. They like to raise money and
spend money. Over the last six presidential elections they have been in
the minority five times. If money were the answer by now they would have
found a majority.
The committee has an historic obligation to insist on a very deep,
through analysis of where we are, what we did, the challenges we face,
and the strategies and structures needed to win in the future.
If basic rethinking doesn't make a lot of people very uncomfortable
it isn't serious enough, thorough enough or bold enough.
This makes the Growth and Opportunity Project a central activity for
the party in the next six to nine months.
THE THREAT
Too many Republicans underestimate the scale of the threat we face.
There is a combination of demographic trends, cultural changes,
technological breakthroughs and intelligent, disciplined application of
resources which could turn America into a national version of Chicago or
California.
It is very unlikely Republicans will win in California without major
changes.
It is very unlikely Republicans could win in Chicago even with major
changes.
Those Republicans who assume bad events will beat the Democrats in
2016 underestimate the power of machines to survive bad performances.
In good economies or bad Democrats win in Chicago.
Throughout the decay and decline of Detroit (from 1,500,000 people
with the highest per capita income in 1950 to under 800,000 and 67th in
income today) Democrats won despite failure after failure.
In Argentina Peronism shattered the country's political culture three
generations ago and Argentina has never recovered.
The Democrats have been building a national machine while the
Republicans have been running campaigns.
Four years of preparation (one could argue 20 years of preparation
going back to the first Clinton victory) collided with a two to six
month Republican general election campaign.
President Obama combined the lessons he learned as a neighborhood
organizer with the principles and systems he learned from the Chicago
machine. In Florida alone they had 800 full time staff by Election Day.
In some areas they had paid people who had lived in neighborhoods for
over three years before the election.
This was organizing unlike anything Republicans had imagined.
As a general rule Machines beat campaigns.
It will take a large coalition working year around to bring enough
people and resources together to defeat a machine
Unless Republicans profoundly and deeply rethink their assumptions
and study what the Democrats have been doing the future could become
very bleak and the Clinton-Obama majority could become as dominant as
the Roosevelt majority was from 1932 to 1968 presidentially and from
1930 to 1994 in the House of Representatives.
THE OBAMA ACHIEVEMENT
No Republican should kid themselves about the scale of President
Obama's political achievement.
I was one of those who thought he would almost certainly be defeated.
Election night results have forced me to rethink everything I
understood about how America makes political decisions.
With a bad economy, high gasoline prices, radical policies, and a
massive deficit, precedent suggested that President Obama would lose in
2012.
However the President's campaign recognized the challenges and
designed strategies and structures to overcome them.
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asserted that "first you win
the argument, then you win the vote."
The Obama campaign took her adage to heart.
Exit polling indicated that Obama won the argument over the economy
and by a large margin the American people blamed former President George
W. Bush rather than his successor for the economic mess.
Building on advantages they had before the campaign began, the Obama
team sealed off African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans (amazingly,
by a bigger margin than Latinos), younger Americans and especially young
single women.
Look at that list.
If the Democrats sustain their dominance in those groups, how can we
believe we will be building a successful Republican future.
From a geographic perspective how do we write off New England, New
York, California, Illinois, etc and think we are going to compete. One
analyst noted that the Democratic majority starts with about 250
electoral votes and simply has to find 20 extra electoral votes to win
the Presidency.
This emerging Democratic machine helps explain why, in five of the
last six Presidential campaigns, the GOP has failed to win a majority
(and the 2004 Bush reelection was the smallest re-election margin of any
President in our history).
If we were a sports team with that record every fan would be
demanding profound change.
OUTSIDE KNOWLEDGE
The current Republican consulting class and their professional
campaign acolytes simply don't know enough to provide the level of
knowledge we need.
Our effort should include reports from and dialogues with a number of
people who have never been Republican consultants (see the "Questions"
section below for some examples).
There should be special RNC meetings throughout 2013 to host day long
workshops in which experts from a variety of areas immerse the committee
in the realities of the world in which we will be competing.
The workshops should be streamed online and cached at an "RNC
STRATEGIC THINKING" website so every Republican activist and concerned
citizen can also learn and offer suggestions and comments.
We need a bottoms up rethinking involving many, many people, not a
top down "expert led" process.
The experts just proved they aren't experts so we should be very
cautious about their reassurance that now they know what they didn't
know six weeks ago.
An open process would also fit more into the emerging nature of the
Internet based, wireless, Information Age fluidity.
MEASURABLE CHANGE
When the analysis has been absorbed and the new strategies and
structures adopted it is vital that the Republicans insist on changes
that are measurable.
For too long we have tolerated consultants and staff promising change
as they went back to their comfortable but losing ways.
For too long we have been intimidated by incumbents and candidates
who promise to follow new strategies and grow new structures but
promptly fall back into the same old habits and patterns.
Mayor Giuliani's use of specific measurements to fight crime in New
York is a case study of insisting on and getting real change.
The results of the Growth and Opportunity Project should lead to
measurable differences in the GOP over the next few years.
REPUBLICAN ASSETS
As we enter this process it is important to remember we have a lot of
assets.
Having lived through 1964 and 1974 I can personally testify that we
are much stronger today.
In November 1974 only 18% of the country identified as Republican.
It's hard to believe that six years later Ronald Reagan won in a
landslide and two years earlier Nixon had won re-election in a
landslide- a note for those who think things can't change rapidly.
The exit polls for Congress in 2012 indicated 33% identified as
Republican, 39% as Democrats, and 28% as independents.
Republicans control the US House ( not true in either of those
earlier disasters).
We have 30 Governors representing 315 electoral votes (45 more than
it takes to win the Presidency).
In 24 states Republicans control both the Governorship and the
legislature.
Those 24 states have 161,390,000 people or 51.2% of all Americans
living under Republican government.
There are only 14 states with total Democratic control.
Overall there are 3863 Republican state legislators and only 3519
Democratic state legislators.
Thus we are in a period where there could be an alliance between 30
Republican Governors and a Republican US House of Representatives which
could highlight better solutions and also highlight the failures of the
federal government.
There is also a large bench of talent in the Republican state
legislators which could lead to a future of very good candidates at
every level.
The question is if we can identify a strategy and structure which
enables us to turn those assets into a victorious future majority.
THE REPUBLICAN CAUSE
Learning how to win in the 21st century is vital to the cause of
freedom. The Republican Party remains dedicated to the cause of Liberty
as described by our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln when he
described the source of American prosperity:
"All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical
cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have
attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our
great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself
more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of
"Liberty to all"�the priinciple that clears the path for all�gives hope
to all�and, d, by consequence, enterprise, and industry to all.
"The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of
Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as
with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but
without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and
consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as
our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere
change of masters."
We remain dedicated to the cause of freedom and liberty but we have
to master the technologies and systems of the 21st century to ensure
that that cause is victorious. We have to apply the principles of
freedom, safety, prosperity, and liberty to helping Americans of all
backgrounds understand how our approach will lead to their having better
lives.
QUESTIONS
The key questions are about Republicans, not about Romney. It is a
big mistake to focus the blame for this defeat on Governor Romney. He
did not lose the majority in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008. This is a much
bigger, deeper problem than an analysis of 2012 in isolation will solve.
The following are examples of the kind of questions the Growth and
Opportunity Project should be exploring. This list is not inclusive but
is merely illustrative of the depth of knowledge we need with which to
begin our exploration of strategies and structures for the future.
Many of these questions will require a dialogue over time rather than
a single meeting or single report. Some of them may remain works in
progress over a number of years.
Start with what the Democrats have been doing right. Build a library
of must reads starting with books like Plouffe's The Audacity to Win,
Bai's The Argument:Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, and
Witwer and Schrager's The BluePrint(: How the Democrats Won Colorado(and
why Republicans Everywhere should care). A small team should be assigned
to pull together every book, article, and interview which helps explain
what the Democrats have been doing and to organize them into topics for
analytical access by every interested Republican. A working group should
also issue a report on lessons to be learned after thoroughly reviewing
all this material. Someone should become the chief researcher and
archivist on our opponents' systems and activities.
2. We need a map of the Democrats' coalition and the scale and
intensity of their coalition. Their organized efforts and networks
simply dwarf anything Republicans and conservatives have developed.
Furthermore, their coalition is a permanent system of activism while the
Republican consultant model is campaign focused and therefore both
episodic and isolated. An ongoing coalition can mass and focus more
energy and resources than isolated short time-horizon campaigns,
3. We need a clear distinction between coalition-based campaigns and
consultant-based campaigns. There are profound differences in systems,
styles, structures, and attitude. The last three big Republican
Presidential victories (1980, 1984, 1988) were coalition campaigns. The
House victories of 1994, 1996, and 2010 were coalition victories. The
Republican consultant class, many campaign professionals, and many
Republican staff are deeply opposed to the coalition model. This choice
is decisive in growing a bigger, stronger, and more robust GOP. The RNC
should insist on this debate and force the transition to a coalition
model including within the RNC structure itself. This question of
strategic doctrine and the culture and structure which implements it is
central to the future of the party. Another billion dollars spent on the
wrong strategy and structure will be another billion dollars wasted. As
an analogy, the French had more and better tanks in 1940 than the
Germans. However they had the wrong strategy and structure for using the
tanks. They were routed in days by a more modern doctrine. Doctrine
defeats dollars and the bulk of the professional GOP is wedded to the
wrong doctrine. This change will be painful but unavoidable if we are to
become a truly competitive 21st century organization. The problem is not
consultants, campaign professionals, and staff as such. We need solid
professionals and experts who can develop complex strategies, build
complex structures, and run complex campaigns. The challenge is to
convert the culture and doctrine from one that is focused on candidate
centric, consultant defined campaigns to one that is built around
coalitions, long term party building and team efforts.
4. We need a timeline and analysis of the Obama Presidency and
campaign. Some components of the campaign go back to 2006 and have been
growing and evolving ever since. Micro-targeting, micro-leaders,
micro-communities, and micro-issues all existed within a larger
narrative. There was solid connection between campaign needs and
Presidential and Executive Branch activities (including policies,
appointments and schedules).
5. Infotainment is a world Democrats enjoy and use and Republicans
either disdain or fear, and as a consequence avoid. The View, the Daily
Show, the Colbert Report, Leno, Letterman, ESPN, Nickelodeon, MTV, and
on and on, represent patterns of communications Republicans often
disdain, seldom appear on and as a consequence are simply invisible to
their audiences. The same could be said for most ethnic media. We need a
report on the appearances of Democrats and Republicans in these areas in
2011 and 2012 and then we need a strategy for Republican engagement.
6. The strategic nurturing over time of micro-issues with
micro-organizations and micro-communicating ( a pattern much richer and
more powerful than micro-targeting) to create micro-communities that
support their team and their candidate has been vastly better done by
Democrats. This deserves its own study and a strategic response that
will require very different systems and structures. There is a huge
difference between the strategic development of issues over time (often
lasting through several election cycles) and the Republican consultant
and professional staff focus on tactics with very short time horizons.
We need at least three case studies of the growth of strategic issues
on the left. The contraception issue ( which none of the GOP candidates
understood when first raised in a debate by George Stephanopoulos in
December, 2011) grew into the War on Women and became a major coalition
message by the time of the Democratic National Convention. Post-election
polling indicates it was very effective in mobilizing and solidifying
one segment of the Obama coalition. It is a good example of a case study
we need. How do we grow our issues? How do we recognize and trump their
issues?
What other strategies should be studied as examples?
7. The 47% comment by Governor Romney reflected a deep belief by many
conservatives and Republican consultants, campaign professionals,
staffs, and activists. The entire psychology of writing off vast parts
of a country or state and focusing narrowly may make some sense for a
specific campaign. but it is a formula for permanent minority status
when adopted by a party. The GOP should end red-versus-blue and narrowly
focused targeting models. What would a 100% Republican Party be like if
we planned 2014 and 2016 with no reference to red or blue states or
counties. It is true that President Obama ran a deliberate class warfare
divisive campaign. However if you analyze his winning coalition it is
amazing how many components were bonded by micro-communities and a sense
of inclusiveness that transcended a narrowly class warfare approach. We
have to understand this pattern of defining differences while being
openly inclusive.
8. California should be a test of the new inclusive
solutions-oriented GOP. Having our largest state dominated by the other
party is an enormous disadvantage for Presidential elections and for
controlling the House. Furthermore a one-party California has proven to
be economically and educationally a disaster for Californians. Finally,
a GOP which includes minorities will by definition be competitive in
California. A special California victory project should be developed and
sustained by the RNC until California is robustly competitive again
(think of it as the equivalent of the long RNC investment in growing
support in the South).
9. A truly national party also has to learn to compete in urban
America. The 87.5 per cent turnout in Milwaukee, which shocked Wisconsin
Republicans, should also be seen as a rebuke to a GOP which has
atrophied in urban America. The RNC will need an urban operation that
recruits, trains, and supports candidates in urban environments. One of
the RNC's great contribution in the 1970s and early 1980s was an
aggressive local candidate program. The local elections division was
crucial to the growth of the post Watergate Party. In the mid-1980s it
was reinforced by GOPAC. Without the work of those two systems we would
not have won a majority in 1994. The RNC is NOT the presidential
committee. It is the NATIONAL committee. As such it should methodically
build the party at every level. This requires a structure and budget to
make the commitment real.
10. Washington is going to be a mess for the next four years, but
there are 30 state capitols with Republican Governors achieving positive
solutions. In 24 states there is Republican control of the executive and
legislative branches. There should be a close, daily alliance between
the RNC, the RGA, and House Republicans. Every effort should be made to
move Republican achievements from the states to the national media.
House Republicans should host hearings led by Republican Governors with
success stories and other hearings with Republican Governors reporting
on waste and failure in the federal government in their states. In
addition, a thorough analysis should be undertaken of successful
Republican Governors. How do thy win? How do they govern? How do they
hold their coalitions together? Washington has a lot to learn from the
states.
11. The challenge of Latino, Asian American, Native American and
African American supportI must be met or the GOP will become a permanent
minority party. We must think through inclusion and not outreach. Out
reach occurs when five white guys have a meeting and call minority
activists. Inclusion is when the activists are in the meeting. As a
start, the RNC should bring together minority elected Republicans and
those white Republicans who do best in minority communities. New
strategies and systems have to be built starting with listening to the
people we want to recruit and attract. This challenge is so big, so
hard, and so central to our success that it should be one of the top
three items at every meeting and have one of the larger budgets at the
RNC. Anything less will simply fail as it has for the last 50 years. The
same model of inclusion has to be applied to expanding Republican
strength among women and especially among younger single women. We
should establish specific goals for increases in support within each
group for 2014 and 2016.
12. How did the Obama team manage such enormous turnouts? What
components of message and mechanism went into that historic result?
Could it be matched by a Republican effort, and if so, how?
13. Data science Obama-style has no relationship to the Republican
model of Internet politics. The Obama system is helped in data science
by its 85 to 90% dominance of Silicon Valley. If you have the founders
of Google and Facebook helping you design your system you have an
enormous advantage over your competitors. The challenge of social
networking, micro-community building and citizen mobilization may be
second only to the challenge of including minority Americans in the GOP
in determining whether Republicans decline into minority status for the
next several decades.
14. The gap between Republican and Democratic pollsters is ominously
large. The shock many Republican analysts and "experts" got election
night was extraordinary and should lead to a deep, long rethinking of
Republican assumptions about the country and the campaign. In my case,
it is leading me to six months of in-depth questioning, learning and
analysis at Gingrich Productions. If it is true that the Obama team was
doing 9,000 calls a night internally, connected to their data scientists
while also using traditional polling it represents a world no Republican
can match today. This is at the heart of knowing reality better than
your opponent and it has to be honestly and courageously addressed.
15. In story telling and narrative development, the mismatch of
resources is as great as in Internet capabilities. Hollywood, New York
City, academics, the news media and trial lawyers are the dominant story
tellers in American life. Every one of them is overwhelmingly (80% plus)
Democratic. Republicans have complained about the inarticulateness and
communications ineffectiveness of the party for the entire time I have
been involved (going back to August 1958). This is the third great
strategic challenge along with minorities and the Internet community.
16. The cultural and language context of politics is being changed
dramatically by entertainment and by the education system. A 30-second
ad can't offset hundreds of hours of sitcoms. A key speech can't turn
around years of indoctrination by left wing teachers and professors.
Republican planning has to be much more aware of the context, especially
for younger voters, within which we are messaging. In the long run there
have to be strategic responses to the left's domination of entertainment
and education.
17. The key to success in politics as in war is the ability to stay
on offense. There is a deeply destructive tendency among Republicans to
fall into a defensive mode (watch the current "fiscal cliff" process as
a depressing example). Learning to stay on offense requires a strategic
vision that enables you to constantly orient to the future, an
operational system that allows you to be inside your opponent's decision
cycle ( see Boyd's work on OODA-loops for an explanation) and the
tactical skill to dominate the media, which will normally be opposed to
you. Republicans as a group have none of these capabilities.
18. What is the Republican vision of a successful America built by a
freedom, opportunity, safety and prosperity majority? If we have no
positive vision to attract people to and no positive vision toward which
we can develop policies, it is impossible to stay on offense and
impossible to build the micro-communities and coalitions which lead to
victory. We have to translate that national vision into offering a
better future in personal, believable terms that draw people away from a
culture of dependency and enable us to offer a positive future rather
than simply attacking the left. We need to become a party that people
want to belong to. For example, we should have had a positive answer for
lower cost, better outcome health care in addition to opposing
Obamacare. People need to know what we are for even more than what we
are against.i
19. These changes will require retraining or replacing much of the
current generation of consultants and campaign staff. All too many of
our current consultants and professional campaign staffs have very short
time horizons built around negative campaigns of tearing down their
opponents. This does not imply that we can succeed without consultants
and campaign staff ( and knowledgeable counterparts in public office).
Just the opposite. Their jobs are so critical we have to ensure they
have the right doctrine and the right skills.
20. There should be an analysis of the Obama campaign compensation
model. Is there a model of compensation which creates a longer time
horizon? A model which encourages investing in a ground game as much as
in television advertising? A model which has high rewards for winning or
for meeting metrics (in some areas we may want to run starter campaigns
to just begin re-engaging those communities and in those cases, the
metrics of achievement may deserve rewards even while falling short of
victory)?
21. What changes should Republicans make to maximize the
effectiveness of their resources? There is a great deal of confusion
about the efforts of the campaign, the committees, the superpacs etc.
What do we need to learn from 2012 and how can we improve resource
allocation in future campaigns?
22. What functions should be decentralized outside Washington? What
lessons can be learned from the Obama-Democratic Party system.
23. There should be an honest, tough minded review of the campaigns,
the party, and the super-pacs. There is a widespread view that money is
not being distributed based on performance and proposals but instead is
being distributed based on cronyism, favoritism, closed (rigged.) bids
etc? This is a Republican issue not an RNC issue. Too much money was
spent by too few people with too few victories to avoid these questions.
24. One test for the emerging new insights, strategies and structures
would be to ask, if they had been in place in 2009 would they have
enabled us to win in 2012? When the various studies have submitted their
recommendations, it would be healthy this August or September to have a
two day simulated 2009-2012 rerun using the new decisions to see what
impact they would have had. That might be a powerful last step in
developing a new model, Information Age, inclusive Republican Party
capable of becoming the governing majority.
25. As we listen to the larger country and learn more about key
groups we failed to win in 2012 a number of new issues will begin to
emerge. We need an issue development process that will enable us to
build micro-communities or supporters and appeal to many people who do
not consider themselves Republican. However this process of issue
development should grow out of the new lessons and not prejudge them.
Your friend,
Newt
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