Newt Gingrich and my powers of intuition

Newt Gingrich is, to use a hackneyed phrase often trotted out to nod kindly in the direction of someone with serious character flaws, a complex man. He's a former history professor and was the architect of the 1994 Contract With America, which suited the national mood at the time and allowed the Republican Party to seriously contend once again with a long-dominant Democrat party at the national level. He demonstrated, at least for a brief period, that he could craft policy visions with a Democrat president without losing sight of his principles. On the strength of that, the country's welfare system was reformed and Bill Clinton submitted a balanced budget to Congress in 1999. He was instrumental in setting the stage for the largest capital-gains tax cut in history. Gingrich is a fellow at both the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution. He's made some interesting documentaries on a variety of subjects.

But I've always had a feeling about that guy. Part of it was his flaky marital track record, beginning with marrying his high-school math teacher and later divorcing her. His daughters from that marriage seem to have assimilated that disruption in their lives and now apparently regard their father warmly, but there's no getting around the selfishness of his behavior. He then cheated on his second wife with the woman who became his third. And there was his whining about not being seated near enough to President Clinton on Air Force One on a foreign junket. In his post-Congress life, policy-related inconsistencies began showing up, notably his support for the Medicare Part D prescription-drug benefit. There was his infamous 2011 statement, during a Meet the Press appearance, that he didn't "think right-wing social engineering [was] any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," referring to his opposition to Paul Ryan's plan to phase out direct Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, a statement he had to try to walk back. One of the most infuriating instances of clouded vision on his part was endorsing Dede Scozzafava, a moderate, instead of conservative  Doug Hoffman in the special-election three-way race in New York's 23rd congressional district in 2009. Hoffman was closing on her in the polls at the time.

The hints were increasing that his wonkery was becoming just plain flakiness.

Then came his early and still-strong enthusiasm for Donald Trump. It's to the point where his frequent appearances on Sean Hannity's FNC show have become vomit-inducing gushfests.

And now a red line has been crossed.

Newt Gingrich is dead to me. He has negated every laudible accomplishment in his curriculum vitae with what he has had to say on John Catsimatidis's radio show:

Said Gingrich:

“President Trump is a New Yorker. He and Scaramucci sort of speak the same language,” Gingrich told John Catsimatidis in a pre-recorded interview on AM970 in New York City that aired Sunday. “And this way he has somebody that makes him kind of comfortable that he’s getting taken care of.”

“Scaramucci is an entrepreneur. He’s aggressive. Trump wants somebody willing to mix it up with the news media, get in the middle of the fight, try to get things done,” Gingrich said.

“I think that Trump is probably very happy with him right now and I think that’s good for Trump himself because part of the reason Trump gets so aggressive is he feels like nobody is defending him and he’s gotta go out and do it all himself,” he continued.

So what did Scaramucci say that Trump so identifies with, he, the one evangelicals to this day say is “God’s man”?

“Reince is a f—— paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said in the interview.

He also went after chief strategist Stephen Bannon, saying, “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c—,” he said.

“I’m not trying to build my own brand off the f—— strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country,” Scaramucci continued.

And reports are that Trump was quite pleased with the outburst. Gingrich’s comments seem to confirm that.

“Scaramucci is a natural fighter. He likes being in the media, he likes being seen, and I think he’s having a good time, and I think all of that comes together in a way that is very positive,” Gingrich said.

There was nothing positive about how he behaved, what he said, or Trump pitting Scaramucci against Priebus, or anybody else in the White House for his own amusement.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Newt has lost his mind.

And people with his kind of influence who have lost their minds are dangerous.

History, the subject that drove Gingrich's interest in public policy, will not be kind to this dark figure.

A simple litmus test

If you side with Speaker Ryan on this, you still embrace conservative principles to at least some degree. If you side with former Speaker Gingrich, you're an idiot who still thinks there's a viable Republican party.

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich criticized current House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) for his lack of endorsement of likely presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump earlier in the day in an interview with CNN.

Gingrich told host Sean Hannity it was a “big mistake” and that it sets the wrong tone for the rest of the Republican Party.

“[I]n the case of Paul Ryan he made a big mistake today and he needs to understand this,” Gingrich said. “He is the Speaker of the House. He has an obligation to unify the party. He has an obligation to reach out. Obviously he and Donald Trump are going to have disagreements. Some of them will work out and some of them they won’t. That’s fine. Our constitution provides that speakers and presidents can fight, but I think he sends the wrong signal and a signal which I think endangers the House Republicans and endangers the Senate Republicans.”

“I much prefer what Mitch McConnell did, what John McCain did –they both said, ‘OK game’s over, we have a nominee. I’m for him,'” he continued. “And I think Paul Ryan has some obligation institutionally to be responsive to the fact that the people of the party he belongs to have chosen a nominee. And frankly in the long history of American politics, Donald Trump is not outrageously outside the norm. This kind of vitriol you get does not reflect accurately people who have been nominated for president over the last 200 years.

Grim junctures like our present one do have the attribute of being clarifying. 2016 is a wheat-from-chaff time for  those of us who really love freedom, God, and the United States of America.

Bad options everywhere

I sure as hell don't want Mitt Romney for president, but I also don't want somebody who is his own worst enemy on a regular basis.

What this tendency to eat our own can do to a man with decades of well-earned credentials and a reputation for integrity

Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator does a little research and finds out that Elliott Abrams said things in yesterday's NRO piece excoriating Newt Gingrich's behavior during the Reagan era that just aren't so.

I've met Elliott Abrams a couple of times - actually, it was during the Reagan era - and I've followed his work over the years. He's been associated with several prestigious think tanks. He's married to Midge Decter's daughter.

The NRO piece is unlike him (and unlike NRO, for that matter) and lots of people are scrambling for an explanation. It seems he's gotten caught up in the fever afflicting a wide swath of the Republican party that absolutely can't live with the thought of a Newt Gingrich nomination. I'm not without big-time reservations, which I've expressed here. I'd be much more pleased with a surge for Santorum, or, say, Bachmann or Perry at this point, but that's not where we are. Barring another bounce for Santorum, the alternative to Newt is Mr. "He's-not-a-bad-guy-he's-just-in-over-his-head" / "Nothing-to-get-angry-about" Reasonable Gentleman. And I can say unequivocally that that scares me a hell of a lot more.

We've always had to carve out our own space

While I for one think it's still important to keep Newt Gingrich's shortcomongs front and center, lest we lapse into self-delusion in our zeal to get behind the most likely anti-Romney, a Newt campaign consultant, Craig Shirley, has penned a Politico piece detailing the struggle of the conservative movement to assert itself and prevail over the Reasonable Gentleman GOP establishment over the last fity-two years.

He makes the point that people proudly call themselves Goldwater Republicans or Reagan Republicans, but that nobody goes around calling himself a Rockefeller Republican or a Ford or Nixon Republican.

It's only because of us that the Republican party stands for anything.

Now, having said the business about flawed spokespeople for time-honored principles . . .

. . . it's important to remember just how flawed that spokesperson is, and how the voting public at large feels about him. The Washington Examiner says Americans generally hate Newt Gingrich.


And a lot of true heroes on the right are part of the swath of folks that are not keen on him at all.

I'll tell you what I hate. I hate the options before us. I hate the array of scenarios for the next ten months. I hate the prospects for Western civilization.

What the hell kind of political process winnows out the best candidates two primaries into the nomination race - in fact, winnows out most of them before the primaries get underway?

What South Carolina means

No, it doesn't make Newt Gingrich any less a problematic figure, but it demonstrates unmistakably that huge numbers of Americans thirst and hunger for real conservative principles, even when articulated by a flawed spokesperson.