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Newt's Contract With America gave GOP candidates a clearly defined conservative campaign agenda to rally around and run on in 1994

NOPE
Exit polls showed the vast majority of voters hadn't the faintest idea what the CWA was even about or that it even existed
It was a NON FACTOR

Hell even Bill Clinton admitted the GUN CONTROL issue cost the dems the house in 94 .Add in the Christian Conservatives and it became a rout

Exit polls are even a less reliable source of sound data then pre-election polls are. They're highly subjective, at best. In 1994 there was only one source of exit polling data, VNS. Remember the VNS results in 2000. VNS died after the 2002 election. Since the CWA was released just six weeks before the election, I'd guess many folks didn't know it even existed as a political document.

Newt`s strategy was to nationalize the election in 1994 and for the most part I believe he succeeded. Consider this. In 1994 the Pew and Gallup pre-election polls had the GOP overtaking the Dems in the final month of the campaign. Perhaps the CWA did have a big influence on voters.

Whether the GOP`s message got out by way of the CWA or as individual issues from the overall GOP campaign agenda, the message got out nonetheless. Clinton was always a strong inspiration for conservatives of all stripes, especailly for gun owners. How many of the 54 House seats the GOP gained were produced by the CWA? Who knows. But to not give credit to Newt Gingrich for his long term effort in FINALLY making the GOP THE majority party in American politics for the first time in 40 years, is to ignore the historic results of the 1994 election itself. The CWA was a significant factor in the GOP winning control of the House.

>>>>Hell even Bill Clinton admitted the GUN CONTROL issue cost the dems the house in 94 .Add in the Christian Conservatives and it became a rout.

And you expected Clinton to say that Newt's CWA beat the Dems? LOL I don't think so. Gun owners, Christian conservatives, small government-tax reform fiscal conservatives, they ALL contributed to the GOP beating the Dems in 1994. Even Ronald Reagan played a role. Dick Armey and Newt wrote most of the CWA based on some of Reagan's speeches from the 1980`s which contained some principled conservative rhetoric. Call it, unfinished business.