Whither the Conservative Movement?

Newt Gingrich talks with Rush Limbaugh about the relevence of the Reagan revolution and ideas for conservative change in the 21st century. Newt:

The challenge is for our generation to come up with a platform that is as bold, a set of solutions that are as bold, as Reagan was in 1979-1980. Reagan didn't go around and say, here's what Eisenhower would have done. He didn't go around and say here's what Goldwater would have done. He went around and said, look, here are the core, unchanging principles. Freedom works, bureaucracy strangles, lower taxes give you more freedom and give you more choices, you're better at creating jobs than government is, and he walked through a series of things like this, and then he turned those into very specific, very practical programs.

Here's Rush:

I think they think that people like me are worshiping a cult of personality with Ronald Reagan when in fact those of us who view Reagan the way I do stress conservative principles and the success that comes with it. It's fine and dandy to come up with scores of proposals, and to have policy this and policy that for dealing with various issues, but that only scratches the surface. A list of policies to take to the American people without a core principle underpinning to justify those policies and explain why they will work, is senseless. ...

The era, the Reagan era, is not over because conservatism is not over. If the Reagan coalition is dead, what replaced it? Somebody tell me that. Nothing has replaced it and that's why so many people are scratching their heads, why so many people a little nervous because there isn't any real leadership out there that causes people, inspires people to get behind it, go rah-rah, and make certain things happen. That's what's missing. Reaganism is leadership. Reaganism is conservatism. It's not a personality cult. ... We're always being told, "Abandon this Reagan stuff, Rush, it's old hat." It's not old hat. It's freedom.

We need ... both. We need timeless rock-solid principles; we need to never abandon faith in freedom; and we need new ideas, new applications of those timeless principles, to address the new problems that confront us.