Posted on 06/25/2009 9:48:02 PM PDT by campaignPete R-CT
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose signature manifesto swept Republicans to power in the mid-1990s, called Wednesday for conservatives to recruit Democrats who oppose tax increases and big government and form a coalition to do battle with President Obama's "fantasy wing of the American left." .................. "If you look at California on the recent vote against raising taxes or spending, when you get 64 percent of the state voting with you, it tells you that in the most Democratic districts of the state, there was a solid majority against raising taxes and spending," Mr. Gingrich told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.
"So I would urge, for example, conservatives in California to find a Democrat to run in every Assembly and Senate seat in California that can't be contested by Republicans, and then to run a Republican in every seat they could possibly win, and then have an overt goal of creating a bipartisan conservative coalition," he said. "I'd do the same thing nationally."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
And start doing this, in say, 1964.
Fact is, even here in Conn., there are many “conservative Dems” who run for open legislative seats. They usually lose, even when they have considerable voter support, because there is no conservative infrastructure in place to support them. Conservatives don’t get involved in DEM primaries.
Newt is being a bit too Machiavellian. Why not simply find Republicans and have them run as Democrats if you are going to go that far. The problem with the strategy above is that even if these candidates get elected will they be loyal to those who elected them or to the powers in the party to which they belong? I think Newt is making many bad assumptions.
some people just don’t get the concept that many disticts cannot be won by Republicans.
In the south end of Hartford, a conservative hispanic Dem lost a primary by 60 votes. The LIB winner went onto the fall election and beat the GOP candidate 88% to 12%. It doesn’t take a military genius to figure out the strategy in those seats.
YOU CANNOT GET GOP CANDIDATES ELECTED IN DISTRICTS THAT HAVE NO GOP VOTERS.
Brilliant. He is focusing on the ideas not the party.
parsy, who is a conservative dem.
That is fine. Then get behind conservative Democrats but make damn sure they are conservative because a lot of good it does to focus on electing conservative Democrats that vote with the Party 90% of the time. Here in Virginia we have Mark Warner as senator and he ran as a Centrist but he is as liberal as Chris Dodd or any other liberal Democrat. You just can not have a strategy that elects Democrats. That should be an exception case by case basis. Does CT have open primaries?
What’s an anti-tax Democrat ?
“, a conservative hispanic Dem lost a primary by 60 votes. “
How conservative could he be?
Well I have mixed feelings about this. I’m a proponent of the GOP learning to compete anywhere, a long and difficult process.
A rat running and anti-tax campaign isn’t likely to win a primary in CA or CT. His opponents will say he hates the poor.
TENN anti-tax activists like to use the 1991 Conn. experience as a case study. Without the anti-tax DEMS in the state house, we would have been steamrollered.
The House in Hartford is now 114 DEMs to 37 GOP.
There is no strategy to form a majority without including DEMS. Some have a strategy of abandoning the state completely and give the DEMS all 114 seats. I oppose that strategy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.