Newt Gingrich said in 2005, prior to the 2006 election and the Republican loss of control over Congress, “Clearly, there’s a pretty strong signal for Republicans thinking about 2006 that they need to do some very serious planning and not just assume that everything is going to be automatically okay.”

In February of this year he said, “And every person who cares about the conservative movement and every person who cares about the Republican party had better stop and say to themselves, there is something big happening in this country. We don’t understand it. We’re not responding to it. And we’re currently not competitive, we had better change and we had better change now.”

Since the warnings began, the Republican Party has lost three elections in Congress, one in a district that went Republican in 2004 by 25 percentage points. I would have to say he knows what he is talking about.

Abraham Lincoln said, “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.”

As the election draws nearer, will the discussion be about the issues that concern us all or about trying to scare people into voting on an emotional fear? I hope it’s the former. God Bless America.

Brett Phippen

Ottumwa