Republican leaders gathered in Boston Wednesday for the start of their three-day summer meeting aimed at addressing the GOP’s outreach tactics and the party’s timing. Among the headline speakers for the meeting are New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former senator Scott Brown, and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett.
On Wednesday, RNC Chair Reince Priebus sat down with former House Speaker and presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich to discuss the problem with the GOP’s messaging during the 2012 election, and what Republicans can do in upcoming elections.
Gingrich spoke about the importance of moving beyond being the “anti-Obama” party, saying, “We are caught up in a culture where as long as we are negative, as long as we are vicious and can tear down our opponent, we don’t have to learn anything.”
The problem, Gingrich noted, is that current elected officials are too caught up in the culture, and less in actually offering voters “a vision of a future.”
“I will bet you, for most of you, that if you go home in the next two weeks while your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, ‘What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?’ they will have zero answer,” Gingrich said. He added that the GOP needed to be the ‘breakout’ party of 2016 by targeting their communities, rather than worrying about beating Hillary Clinton. “The news media will prop [Hillary Clinton] up,” Gingrich said, “but if she has to be defending prison guards of the past, and we get to offer the pioneers of the future…I don’t think she can win.” Gingrich also advised Republican leaders to reach out to young entrepreneurs and innovators. “We become the party of the young by being the party of the young.”
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