The Gipper’s 101st birthday on Monday merits a class in Reagan 101.

One of my points is that conservatives can’t win on principle alone, without doing the hard work of learning how to communicate those principles. The ability to communicate rather well, in at least a memorable fashion, is what has kept Newt Gingrich in contention during this primary season. I guess the third factor in the equation, one I left out in the piece linked above, is that the communicator must be a good messenger on a personal level — reassuring, trustworthy, likeable, and believable. That’s where Gingrich fails. If only we could again find somebody to combine the principles, the ability, and the likeability, then conservatives would finally be truly ascendant.