As Republicans and Democrats vie for the leadership of America’s next governing majority, AEI senior fellow and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will describe the three key principles that will define this majority. First, it will represent the values and beliefs of the vast majority of Americans. Second, it will insist on successful performance by government that can be measured, analyzed, and assessed. Third, it will insist on protecting America and her allies from the threat of the irreconcilable wing of Islam, resurgent Russian aggressiveness, as well as the challenge of Chinese economic and scientific developments.
 
On Friday, Gingrich will discuss this leadership battle in the context of President Lincoln’s admonition at Gettysburg that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” In particular, Gingrich will examine: how government of the people is being threatened by the censorship of McCain-Feingold and other anti-citizen efforts to strangle public dissent; how government by the people is in danger of being replaced by an iron triangle of tax-funded incumbents, interest-group lobbyists, and powerful bureaucracies; and how government for the people is being replaced by government for the bureaucracies, for the public employee unions, and for the trial lawyers. Gingrich will assert that only a mass movement comparable to the broad-based political movements of the Jeffersonians, Jacksonians, Lincoln Republicans, and the Progressives of the early twentieth century could break the power and hold of entrenched interests in Washington, D.C., and in state, county, and city governments.