GOP Must Work on Message, Conservatives Say

At the end of their “Dark Ages Weekend,” leading conservatives concluded there’s nothing wrong with their “revolution”; it’s their message that could use a little fine-tuning.

Many worried aloud that President Clinton has outmaneuvered them in the budget debate by portraying Republicans as uncaring and their revolution as cruel.

“We need to do better at capturing the moral high ground,” said Arianna Huffington, an organizer of the weekend. “Cutting the government is only half of the equation. The other half is removing barriers to helping people, encouraging community solutions.”

The Dark Ages Weekend, a brainchild of a couple of conservative, thirtysomething Washington lawyers, was a spoof of the “Renaissance Weekend” at Hilton Head, S.C., that is popular with the president and many of his high-striving friends.

The Miami event attracted more than 300 prominent conservatives from politics, business and political think tanks. It included the Charlemagne tennis tournament, a Canterbury Tales banquet, a William the Conqueror golf tournament and a masquerade party.

“It’s good that we are able to laugh at ourselves,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. “A lot of times it’s portrayed that Republicans don’t have a sense of humor.”

Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition advised them to spend less time talking about dismantling the federal government and more time reminding people that the revolution would return power to the states and to them personally.

“If you don’t use the right words, you can’t get the message across,” added Mike Huffington. The millionaire Santa Barbara businessman, who is married to Arianna Huffington, made an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 1994.

“Clinton stands for welfare reform and so do we,” Mike Huffington said. “He says we have to solve the Medicare problem and so do we. But he’s using more effective words than the Republicans.

“Clinton is a better communicator. Now if Ronald Reagan were our leader, we’d win the battle,” he said.

Most of the panels, focusing on such issues as welfare, the environment and the entertainment industry, concentrated on better salesmanship for the GOP revolution.

“Conservatives are driving the political discourse in this country,” said Laura Ingraham. She and fellow Washington lawyer Jay Lefkowitz came with up with the idea of the Dark Ages Weekend.

“This is a chance for conservatives to sit back, let their hair down and hammer out differences of opinion--and there are a lot of them,” Ingraham said.

She noted that conservatives “have lost their edge in the debate over welfare” and the president has “captured words like compassion.”

“The most mean-spirited thing you can do is give people no sense of self-worth and give them incentive to do nothing,” she said. “We are compassionate because we want to break that cycle.”

Among others attending the conference were Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork, former Reagan aide John H. Sununu and conservative strategist Richard Viguerie.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) had planned to attend, but decided to cancel to go home to Georgia to meet with constituents and see his family.