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Friday, Nov. 10, 2006 12:27 a.m. EST

Gingrich Sees Hope for Conservative Agenda



The midterm elections that turned over control of Congress to the Democrats were a defeat for Republicans, not conservatives, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

He believes there is still hope to advance a conservative agenda if House Republicans can find allies among conservative Democrats.

"The balance of power in the House is now 50-plus blue-dog (conservative) Democrats,” he told the Washington Times. GOP insiders believe Republicans suffered defeat largely because voters perceived that they had strayed from conservative principles.

A poll of 15 key congressional districts by the Club for Growth found that voters think the "GOP used to be the party of economic growth, fiscal discipline and limited government, but in recent years, too many Republicans in Washington have become just like the big spenders that they used to oppose."

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One alumnus of the Gingrich-led 1994 "Republican Revolution" blamed the election loss on the Bush administration, according to the Times.

"The Republican Party ... needs to recognize that the Bush administration was largely the architect of its defeat, and that the party can no longer afford to play by yesterday's playbook," said former Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican.

Republicans "must break with the White House," chart their own course "with new, younger, bolder leadership" and offer "a true alternative" to Democrats, Barr said.

Former Rep. Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, has publicly blamed Christian conservatives for the party's woes.

He wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal criticizing GOP leaders who he said had attempted "to rally their political base on wedge issues like illegal immigration and gay marriage," and had thereby "alienated independents."

But Focus on the Family Chairman James C. Dobson said Armey "can't be serious" in urging Republicans to repudiate Christian conservatives.

"Someone should tell him that without the support of that specific constituency, John Kerry would be president and the Republicans would have fallen into a black hole in '04."
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