Democrats Should Listen to Newt Gingrich. Seriously.

As he worked to unleash the Republican Revolution, Newt Gingrich famously crafted a lexicon to disparage Democrats. Among his favorite 1990s buzzwords: corrupt, pathetic, and sick. With C-SPAN cameras newly installed in the House, he spoke to an empty chamber, believing his words would find an audience of conservatives who wanted to “speak like Newt.” He packaged this new vocabulary in a memo titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” and he baited Democratic leaders as pro-communist, un-American traitors in business suits.

But three decades after storming into Congress as...