Newt Gingrich's 5 Goals for America

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who may or may not be running for president, is lately busy explaining to people that the Republicans' decisive win in 2010 is only the first step toward reclaiming liberty in America and that, to be successful, “the conservative movement must move from a rejection model of conservatism to a replacement model of conservatism.” As part of this he identifies five major goals, which he outlined in a speech he gave recently in Dallas to the Institute for Policy innovation. Reaching back to the American War for Independence, the setting of his latest series of books, Gingrich said, “Think of the Declaration of Independence as an act of rejection.”

“The American people concluded that we had rights and that the British were trampling on our rights. And so we rejected that and said we declare we’re independent. However, that didn’t make us independent. We declared our opinion. In order to successful and independent, there had to be two enormous acts of replacement,” the first being the ability to actually defeat the British and the second being the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the U.S. Constitution.

The contemporary challenge, Gingrich says, begins with “Reasserting American Exceptionalism.”

“The Founding Fathers believed in American Exceptionalism because we are the only country in history that recognizes that power comes from God to each citizen personally. The citizen is personally sovereign. The citizen then loans power to the state. The state does not loan power to the citizen. This is the opposite of Obamaism.”

[Check out a roundup of political cartoons on Obama.]

The second is developing the ability to compete with China and India. “We must commit ourselves to undertaking the necessary reforms so that we can become the most productive, most creative, and most prosperous country in the world,” he says. “These economic requirements are our basis for a national security system that enables us to be the safest and freest country worldwide. If we take seriously the importance of competing with China and India, we will be the dominant country on the planet for the next hundred years. However, if we do not have the courage to compete with China and India, we will rapidly cease to be safe and will rapidly cease to be free. Rather than complaining about how China and India have saved their money, maintained trade surpluses, and weathered the economic crisis well, as President Obama has done, we must focus on how we can reform ourselves dramatically.” The third is “ending the bubble of government.”

[See an Opinion slide show of the Republican Party’s five rising stars.]

“Government is too big, too expensive, too in debt, and it is not going to want to change. Like the information technology bubble in 1999, the housing bubble in 2007, and the Wall Street bubble in 2008, the fourth bubble that is government threatens our economy. Government employee unions are the new elite, and we need a replacement model.”

The fourth, says Gingrich, is “telling the truth about radical Islamism.”

“The Obama administration is living in a fantasy world; they won’t tell the truth about our enemies. We must have the courage to tell the truth about radical Islamists, and we must have the courage to act on that truth. We must identify our opponents, be honest about the scale of the threat, and undertake a grand strategy to defeat radical Islamism.”

The fifth and final goal, Gingrich says, is “empowering every American to pursue happiness.”

“Since we truly believe that every American is endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights – among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--then we must be determined to go into our country’s poorest communities, whether it is in the valley, the inner city, or poor, rural areas. We must change the culture; we must change the bureaucracy; we must change the tax code; we must do whatever it takes to ensure that every American is truly capable of pursuing happiness, as they have been endowed by their Creator with that right.”

“When conservatives are truly serious about all American citizens having the right to pursue happiness, we will create a 75 percent majority,” he says “and we will be able to offer our children and grandchildren a vastly better future than the bureaucratic welfare state of dependency, coercion, and ineffectiveness we face today.”

• See an Opinion slide show of the GOP's rising stars.
• Check out a roundup of political cartoons on Democrats and Republicans.
• Follow the money in Congress.