The Gingrich Style
Hysteria, slurs, lies and reckless opportunism
They loved him until he aimed his vitriol against one of their own, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, deriding the Wisconsin Republican's plan to gut Medicare as "right-wing social engineering."
Inundated by denunciations from every quarter of his party and movement, Gingrich swiftly backtracked and apologized and tried to blame the media. But his former fans are perhaps beginning to realize what most Americans understood about him years ago—that he is wholly untrustworthy and unfit for leadership.
Addicted to excess in every facet of his life, Gingrich first became an important figure in the conservative movement almost two decades ago chiefly because—unlike the more decorous Republicans who then led his party—he was eager to utter the most vicious accusations against liberals and Democrats.
More than that, he encouraged other Republicans around the country to do likewise, founding an organization called GOPAC that trained right-wing candidates how to use a lexicon of slurs describing their liberal or Democratic opponents as "sick," "pathetic," "radical" and "traitors," among other things.
He echoed that list in his attack on the Ryan plan, too, which he described as "radical," giving great offense to his fellow Republicans.
His Unwholesome Influence
Yet Gingrich's blustering, abusive rhetorical style has not only served him well, at least until now, but has also become the dominant tone among Republicans and conservatives. When he rants on about the "secular socialist Obama machine" as a threat comparable to Nazi Germany or Soviet Communism, nobody on the right tells him to dial it back and almost everybody applauds.
Gingrich makes these wildly inappropriate comparisons habitually, without thinking about the harm they may cause. Last year, he saw an opportunity to exploit the controversy over the so-called Ground Zero mosque (which was neither located at Ground Zero nor simply a mosque). So he entered that debate warning that we are on a "precipice" and then quickly resorted to the most extreme language, calling the harmless people who wanted to build an interfaith cultural center downtown (with the support of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg) as "radical Islamists" whose behavior was like Nazis demonstrating "next to the Holocaust Museum."
He didn't worry that his aggressive blather might actually serve the purposes of the real Islamist militants, whose chief strategy is to persuade the Muslim masses that America hates them and despises their faith. He saw a chance to promote himself at the expense of others, and he seized it, as usual.
That reckless opportunism is what we can expect from Gingrich as the presidential primary campaign unfolds, which is why most Democrats hope that he stays in and many Republicans wish he would dry up and blow away. With his darkly comical history as an advocate of family values (who has been divorced twice and married three times under the most dubious circumstances) and heartland frugality (who racked up a huge debt with the Tiffany jewelry company), he has come to symbolize the least attractive aspects of his ideological brethren.
But as conservatives ostracize and isolate their former hero, they might also reflect on his unwholesome influence in their own development—and try to imagine how to banish not just this egregious politician, but the Gingrich style, as well.
© 2011 Creators.com
I don't think the Republicans have yet to produce a good candidate. At this point Obama appears re-electable. I'm not totally anti-Obama. He did keep the Bush era tax cuts which has saved me thousands in. He ordered the hit on Bin Laudin. And he's backed off on the Obamacare thing. Obama is looking very Republican these days. Would be nice if he gave us some train money for the Chicago line.
Gingrich knows his stuff, very intelligent man. But as the article states, he has his quirks. As a Republican, I have similar concerns.
I believe in 2013 the shit will hit the fan. Dem or Rep, the next president will have to deal with the deficit. And WE are all going to have to pony up some cash to pay it down.
Too much "eye of Newt", eh?
Yes, Obama is looking more Republican all the time, just like George W was looking more "Left" as time went on. Remember that the "color" of Obama's "character" is not what you see on his skin, it is who raised him, who "indoctrinated" him with his values. He was not raised by his Kenyan father, he was barely raised by his white American mother. He was raised by his white American grandmother, an even older set of American values than his liberal mother who laid down with that "interesting" foreign student from the dark continent. Besides, both white mom and black dad were of the top academic levels, his dad was one of the brightest stars in Kenya, not some descendent of a cotton-picking slave. With these smart genes, he was destined to attend Harvard, not get in as some affirmative action case.
Nationwide (and statewide) candidates need to run for the moderate centrist position, they must win the votes of both their blue-voting metro areas as well as their red-voting rural areas. The hard-core bases never fully embrace them. But, run as a hard-core, and they will not get the cross-over votes needed to win the 50% majority required.
Gingrich reperesents that hard-core conservative republican base, the hot-head kind that we would not want carrying a gun under constitutional carry rules. He represents a base that would shoot first, then try to justify their actions later.
So Newt went against Paul Ryan's MediCare cut plan. Newt is also a traditional Republican, he knows the value of campaign contributions, it only comes from those who make big money off the government programs. Once the system is handing the money to you, the last thing you want is "Change" that could take it away.
Paul Ryan is rooted in the same place as Russ Feingold. Where one can live a comfortable, secure, white suburb life off of a paycheck no bigger then a GM autoworkers. It takes these kind of low maintenance people to talk about "there's too much money in the game". Newt's kind will never say that.
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Now that Obama is in there, he has figured out that no change is permitted if it doesn't have someone making money off of it, profit that easily pays the cost of adapting to that change. That's why the democrats cannot come up with a real plan, (and neither will the republicans). The right thing to do is to change things so that the money does not even need to be spent. But that reduces the money flow so that people who used to make big money will no longer make it, no more campaign donations. Hell will freeze over before that is ever allowed, there's nothing Dem or Repub about it, nothing red or blue, nothing Christian or secular.
It's a core American value. You don't waste time building something unless you know you can finish it and personally benefit from it. My grandkids have not even been conceived yet, why should I set them up when I do not personally know and approve of them?
Makes you wonder why the US created NASA and put a man on the moon. Oh, the states of Florida, Texas, California, even Alabama made money off of that spending. Now it is clear, and none of these are northern states.