Their two strongest slogans are “Send a message to Washington” and “Take back America.” I know both very well because they were the main tools used to defeat me in Utah’s Republican convention two weeks ago. They also worked in Kentucky on Tuesday. They are more powerful than most pundits inside the Beltway realize.
Yet when the new members of Congress whom these slogans elect in November take office, the question becomes: Will they be Carter or Reagan?…
As president, Carter was downright depressing. His famous “malaise” speech warned us that America’s best days were behind us and suggested that we are a country in irreversible decline. Too many Tea Party speeches sound the same note, even as they invoke Ronald Reagan’s name. They are wrong to do so, in my view, because Reagan never lost his optimism and his hope for the future. He was elected because he was good at slogans, but he succeeded as president because he focused on solutions.
I urge all of the Tea Partyers to follow Reagan, not Carter. If they want their movement to be more than a wave that crashes on the beach and then recedes back into the ocean, leaving nothing behind but empty sand, they should stop the “gloom talk.” These are not the worst times we have ever faced, nor is the Constitution under serious threat.
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