From Newt Gingrich’s Winning the Future Newsletter November 15:
“From a House Republican standpoint, the center of gravity should be the 54 Blue Dog Democrats. If we and the Blue Dogs can find a handful of key things to work on together, we can almost certainly create a majority on the floor just as the Reagan Republicans and conservative Democrats did in 1981. Bipartisanship can be conservative and back bench rather than liberal and establishment leadership defined. What did the Blue Dogs promise to get elected? What was the nature of their coalition back home? They give us the best opportunity to create grassroots efforts to pass solid legislation… “
NOTE: We’re sure some readers to TMV (which gets readers from all sides) will immediately dismiss the quote because it comes from Gingrich. But he is CORRECT. Coalitions can take many forms. And coalition building — whether done on the right or the left — is far different from the one-party, parliarmentary form of government that recently prevailed until the Nov. 7 elections. And American democracy, and the safeguarding of it, has worked best throughout our history when politicos were forced to also take into consideration politicians — and voters — who didn’t belong to their parties. If there are competing attempts to build dominant coalitions, national consensus and voters gain.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.