Their electorates are particular and local. A leader who seeks to attain national power by building a congressional majority is naturally going to be inclined to shun the grand themes of a presidential candidate and instead try to identify issues that could move particular and local blocs of voters out of his opponent's coalition and into his own. This made considerable tactical sense, but it left Republicans speechless and defenseless in their 1995-1996 battles with Bill Clinton. To this day, conservatives have not recovered from Gingrich's downgrading of thematics. In 1999, for the first time since the 1940s, there is no generally accepted conservative agenda.
Conservatives have dozens, even hundreds, of projects and concepts.
In his 1984 book Window of Opportunity , he interpreted the success of the Star Wars movies as proof that Americans yearned for a renaissance of the space program. In his 1992 speech to the Republican convention, he interpreted rising quality standards in the private sector as proof that the public had wearied of the bureaucratic welfare state. Gingrich taught a generation of conservative intellectuals to sleuth out the potential political implications of the success of particular movies, songs, and television shows. It was an amusing parlor game, but it dangerously disparaged the importance of political leadership. As Clinton again and again bested Gingrich, conservatives lost faith in the political appeal of their message.