Newt Gingrich is back to finish the job of political ruin
Kevin McCarthy and his House Republican leadership team have called on Newt Gingrich to advise them on their midterm election strategy, The Post’s Jeff Stein and Laura Meckler reported recently.
Man of No Principles hires Man of Low Character: What could possibly go wrong?
But the choice is perfect, in a way unintended by the upwardly failing McCarthy. Gingrich, leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994, bears a singular responsibility for precipitating the ruin of the American political system. So it’s appropriate that he is returning for what might be American democracy’s final act.
Before and during his fouryear reign as speaker of the House, Gingrich pioneered much of the savagery we see today: treating opponents as criminals, un-American and subhuman; using shocking language; perpetrating a grinding attack on the press; and sabotaging government operations and institutions.
McCarthy has a famous weakness for strongmen. First, he was Donald Trump’s “my Kevin.” Now, he’s a disciple of Trump’s demagogic progenitor.
Right on cue, Gingrich displayed his anti-democratic instincts. He said on — where else? — Fox News that if Republicans regain the majority in the House, lawmakers on the Jan. 6 investigate committee are “going to face a real risk of jail for the kind of laws they are breaking.”
Threatening to imprison opponents for unspecified crimes? The hallmark of authoritarians everywhere. And vintage Gingrich.
Three decades before Trump inspired supporters to chant “Lock her up!” Gingrich popularized the idea that Democrats weren’t just wrong — they were criminals. They didn’t just disagree — they were corrupt and anti-American.
In the 1980s, as a young backbencher from Georgia, Gingrich led a successful campaign to oust Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright over ethics allegations. (Gingrich was later reprimanded and fined for similar offenses.) On the House floor, Gingrich accused 10 Democrats of illegality and disloyalty to the United States. In 1991, he suggested Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee would betray national security by leaking secrets.
He accused President Bill Clinton and countless other Democrats of corruption, illegal financial schemes and political campaigns, and endless coverups. He accused administration officials of shredding compromising documents and the president himself of “blackmail, “lawbreaking” and subverting the “rule of law.”
As Jonathan Chait noted in New York magazine, Gingrich “obsessively criminalized his opponents, both real and imagined, calling at various times for the arrests of such disparate figures as Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, Madonna and various poll workers.”
“Listen to how he describes the politics of his everyday rivals, `the left-wing Democrats’: `sick,’ `grotesque,’ `loony,’ `stupid,’ `corrupt,’ `extraordinarily destructive,’” John Harwood wrote in the St. Petersburg Times in 1989. Gingrich said the Democrats’ “value structure” included “all the multipartner sex you wanted,” “all the recreational drugs you wanted” and “let murderers out on the weekends.” Gingrich said Democrats “represent the party of total hedonism, total exhibitionism, total bizarreness, total weirdness, and the total right to cripple innocent people.”
Long before Trump attacked the “fake news” media as the “enemy of the people,” Gingrich attacked the media for “despicable demagoguery.”
Like Trump, Gingrich said his opponents were “vicious.” He accused them of “shamelessly lying and exploiting children,” of supporting child sexual abuse, of “decadence,” of being “counterculture McGovernicks.” Labor unions were “dictatorial.” Clinton created a “European Vietnam” in the Balkans and encouraged mass shootings by undermining American values.
Gingrich pioneered the nowcommon refusal to negotiate, which brought hopeless gridlock and dysfunction to the political system. “We will not compromise,” he asserted before budget negotiations began.
So it’s entirely fitting that Gingrich is back atop the GOP. In a sense, he never left.