Gop To Attack ‘Clinton Liberals’

While much of the public and all of the press are focused on who the Republicans eventually will pick to run against Bill Clinton for the presidency, the speaker of the House is spending 10 days in Tampa, Fla., with a small group of strategists drawing up plans for a GOP victory in November.

Seated next to me for two hours on a plane ride from Washington to Atlanta last week, Newt Gingrich took out three sheets of paper and outlined a strategy that, he said, will be refined and then implemented beginning in late March or early April.

Clinton “is the most enthusiastically dishonest politician ever to occupy the White House, (and) no Republican who is harnessed to the burden of truth can verbally match him,” said Gingrich. So, the speaker believes, Clinton must be “ruthlessly defined” by a Republican team which will draw on polls showing a new “values majority” and which will paint the president as the chief opponent of those values.

Since 1968, this “values majority” has split, with roughly 30 percent going to the liberal candidate and 70 percent to the conservative candidate.

In addition, Gingrich said, there is an “emerging dissatisfied-customer majority,” which is reflected in a February Reader’s Digest survey that found 68 percent believing they are overtaxed.

And according to a USA Today poll, 71 percent of baby boomers and 70 percent of the Generation X population believe they will receive little or no Social Security. This opens an opportunity for Republicans, said Gingrich, to paint “Clinton liberals as a unionized, bureaucratic Washington government that doesn’t deliver.”

The chart Gingrich drew for me has the “Clinton liberals,” appropriately, on the left and “the rest of us” on the right. The Clinton liberals are centralized in Washington; the rest of us are back home with our families, relating better to local government and local leaders.

The Clinton liberals believe in “compassionate bureaucracy”; the rest of us believe in a compassionate society filled with good people. “Our models are Alexis de Tocqueville and Marvin Olasky,” says Gingrich. “We are going to redefine ‘compassion’ and take it back.”

The Clinton liberals, he continued, desire to maintain programs that mire people in poverty, ignorance, addiction, alcoholism and entitlements. The rest of us want to liberate people from these things to self-reliance, responsibility, productivity, achievement and the pursuit of happiness.

The Clinton liberals, Gingrich said, believe in a secular, multicultural, multilingual, situation-ethics, “who are we to judge?” “just say maybe to drugs” society. The rest of us believe in a Creator, truth, American civilization, character and just saying no to drugs.

Finally, the speaker said, the Clinton liberals believe in higher taxes to pay off the unions’ political agenda and in federal bureaucracy on the taxpayers’ credit card. The rest of us want lower taxes, lower interest rates, more take-home pay, more profitable savings, more jobs and a leaner, decentralized government.

Gingrich also said a major Republican theme this fall will be “Clinton’s three C’s: cronies, corruption and cover-up.”

He said that if the Republican presidential nominee tries to battle Clinton one-on-one, “we lose.” But, the speaker believes, if a team of Republicans blankets the country with these GOP themes, noting the distinctions between the president and the Republican team (and, said Gingrich, Republicans must run as a team), “we win decisively.”

Isn’t he worried that telling me of his plan will allow the Clinton team to mount a defense against it? Not really. “It’s like the old Green Bay Packers sweep,” said the speaker. “You knew it was coming, it happens real slow, but if your team designs it right, the other team loses anyway.”

Following the Tampa meetings, Gingrich will outline the strategy for state GOP chairmen, along with Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour.

Gingrich is looking for a label that works as well in this campaign as “Contract with America” worked in 1994. Tentatively, he’s settled on “The Great Choice” to emphasize what he believes defines “the most important election in 62 years.”

If Gingrich wins with this strategy, I’ll frame the charts he drew for me.