A Newt Or A Hyena?

So CNN and Fortune Magazine published a fawning bit of PR today on behalf of Newt Gingrich, the former Repug speaker of the U.S. House who ushered in “the politics of personal destruction,” or at least practiced it more ruthlessly than anyone in my memory. The occasion was the anniversaries of Gingrich’s swearings-in in as speaker in 1994 and 1996.

As you can read from the story, Gingrich has decided that he’s going to run for President in 2008 in a highly unusual manner (though typical for him in his consummate, sickening egotism). He’s going to let the election come to him instead of the other way around.

Now seriously, if a Democratic candidate out there decided to run a campaign like that, do you HONESTLY think I for one would support this person? I carped at Bob Casey for awhile because that’s what he seemed to be doing in his Senate contest against Santorum, but I guess he showed me (I know I’ll end up butting heads with Casey over time, but that will be a completely different circumstance from anything I would have had to deal with versus Santorum, and thankfully we have all been saved from that).

I suppose the article is meant to kick-start any momentum Gingrich hopes to generate, but I really should point out a thing or two here.

To begin, this is how Fortune writer Nina Easton characterizes Gingrich:

“The radical realist who defied conventional wisdom 12 years ago by stealing the House out from under the noses of entrenched Democrats now plans a surprise attack for the presidency.”

The “radical realist”? Is THAT what Gingrich is supposed to be?

I would say that the following excerpt from this Salon.com story paints a somewhat different picture…

For veterans of congressional ethics scandals, Gingrich makes an unlikely champion of clean politics. It is Gingrich, after all, who still holds the distinction of being the only sitting House speaker to be disciplined by his colleagues for ethical wrongdoing. "Gingrich has a tremendous pot-calling-the-kettle-black problem," says Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, a watchdog group that hounded Gingrich during the 1990s. "This hardball fundraising strategy was started by Gingrich."

Before the 1994 election, several reports noted that Gingrich had been warning the heads of corporate political action committees to give generously to Republican candidates or face political retribution. It was a threat that soon became conventional wisdom, as Republican leaders built increasingly close ties to the lobbying community and more and more corporate funds found their way into Republican coffers. By 1996, Gingrich found himself saddled with a number of ethical problems similar in type, though not in scale, to the Abramoff scandal. He was accused of misusing nonprofit organizations for political purposes, personally benefiting from political contributions and giving false statements to ethics investigators. The House eventually voted to reprimand Gingrich and require him to pay a $300,000 penalty.

Gingrich is most closely associated with the Contract on America, implemented after the 1994 election in which the Repugs seized power in the House by Gingrich, Dick Armey, and the rest of the conservative gang. This prescient Mother Jones article written in 1995 was a harbinger for what would soon be realized in the most hideous way imaginable.

In the name of fiscal responsibility, Republicans will press for deep cuts in programs many Americans have come to rely upon for their health and overall well-being. Everything from poultry inspections and federal park maintenance to health research and public broadcasting is likely to suffer.

...

Obviously, cutting federal benefits to the poor, blind, and disabled is not what most Americans had in mind when they turned over control of Congress to the GOP. But that is what the Republicans have in store. All of the above programs would have to be radically reduced just to give the Republicans a chance of living up to their promises to cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget.

And what effect did “the Contract” have on the environment anyway? This Sierra Club article explains (also written from the time when the Contract was passed into law), noting here that…

At first glance, the package has little to say about the environment. But buried within the bills -- which sport advertising-slogan names such as the "American Dream Restoration Act" -- lie a number of provisions that would indirectly undermine the foundation of environmental, health and safety protections.

And what is truly funny about Easton’s article is the description of Gingrich as “a health care visionary praised by business and medical groups,” given the fact that the Contract had the happy coincidence (for the Repugs) of derailing any efforts at serious health care reform by then-first-lady Hillary Clinton.

So it looks like Gingrich will try to run for the White House by appearing in media-friendly venues and before fellow academics that will fawn on cue for him and admire the alleged hugeness of his intellect and his imaginary conciliating presence amidst a sea of partisanship that he, more than anyone else, created in the politics of this country.

What a laugh.