The conservatives' greatest success is changing the political conversation. Making the role of government something to debate as opposed to being taken for granted. We've won that war.

But the emphasis on balancing the budget has detracted from the overall message which is to challenge 30 years of a failed Great Society government-centered approach -- and led to our precipitous decline in public opinion. By focusing so much on dollars and cents, the public has lost track of why Republicans came to power and wanted to cut certain programs. It's not just because they were expensive, but because they were ineffective.

Instead, Clinton has framed the debate, posing as the protector of our values -- of caring and compassion. He keeps repeating the same sentence again and again: "I will veto any balanced budget if it does not protect the values/principles/spending priorities of the American people." By allowing him to do that, I think we have lost a lot of the moral high ground.

Republicans can only recapture that ground by talking about how we care for those in need. This is central. It's at the heart of a democracy. A majority party has to have a clear way of articulating this vision. It can't just be an afterthought and Gingrich knows that. But he has not spotlighted alternatives. Alternatives do exist. Social problems are being solved at the community level without the help of government. And there are Republicans working in those areas, on ways to replace failed systems -- on welfare, education, health -- but the leadership has not put those proposals on the front burner, where they belong.

As Lincoln said, you need public sentiment if you are going to have a successful revolution. You can't have a revolution that is based just on dismantling. A revolution has to be based on a vision of where it is going -- the rebuilding part. The "government leave-us-alone" part is one part of the equation. But we have to replace less government with more of ourselves, more community and citizen involvement.

The problem with the revolutionaries is their message. It's incomplete.

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