Santorum, Gingrich Give Dour Speeches at CPAC
For a group of politicians who invoke Ronald Reagan as if he were a cross between George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ, the Republican presidential candidates haven’t learned his secret to success very well. The two candidates who invoke him the most often—Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich—do the worst job of imitating his political strategy. If you want to understand why Mitt Romney would be a better candidate in the general election than Gingrich or Santorum, the candidates’ speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington on Friday were a perfect demonstration.
Reagan, of course, was a conservative. But his appeal to non-traditional Republican voters lay in his positive vision of America. He called it “a shining city on a hill” and declared “morning in America.” Even though Jimmy Carter never actually used the word “malaise,” the contrast between Reagan’s simplistic optimism and Carter’s grim realism was crucial to Reagan’s victory in 1980. If Santorum and Gingrich were really the apostles of Reaganism they claim to be, you’d never know it from their speeches to CPAC.
One of those MBAs was Daryn Dodson from Stanford; the following year, he returned with 25 fellow Stanford MBAs, who were supported by alum Jim Coulter, co-founder of Silicon Valley private equity giant, TPG. "Stanford would not have come here if it
