Newt Gingrich took pains to wrap himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan during last week’s Fox debate in Iowa. He reminded viewers that Reagan was once called “not electable,” just as he sometimes is. He went on to point out he had “accomplished conservative goals” as speaker in the 1990s, including welfare reform and a balanced budget. “I am someone who campaigned with Reagan,” he concluded.
But at the same time Newt tries to wrap himself in the Reagan mantle, he also exhibits another nostalgic tic that should give conservatives agita. Newt is an unabashed admirer of the Roosevelts — Theodore and Franklin. Together those two presidents embodied the Progressive Era and the New Deal, developments which dramatically expanded Washington’s powers and radically changed the expectations Americans had of government.
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Just last week, Newt made clear his desire to emulate the two men when he told Newsweek magazine that, in handling intractable problems such as poverty, “we’re gonna experiment and experiment and experiment until we break through.” When Newsweek’s Peter Boyer dryly noted that this might “not please the ear of a small-government conservative,” Gingrich didn’t flinch: “It makes me, in some ways, like the two Roosevelts.”
Such talk drives many conservatives to distraction. In early December, Larry Kudlow of CNBC confronted Newt with his constant invocations of Teddy Roosevelt by pointing out that the man bolted the GOP in 1912 to run as a third-party presidential candidate, wanted to raise taxes, and was an inveterate regulator and a “government activist.” Kudlow went so far as to bluntly ask: “Are you actually the conservative candidate that so many people are hoping you are?”
Gingrich’s response was equivocal. “Well, first of all, there are a lot of different Teddy Roosevelts. He was a very complicated man,” he explained. “The Theodore Roosevelt as president is very different than the Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 running for president on a very aggressive big-government strategy. . . . Here was a guy who, as a pragmatic person looked around and said, ‘I want to fix these things. I want to find solutions.’ He’s also a great American nationalist.”
But Newt’s admiration for Teddy pales before the deference he shows his cousin, FDR. In his 1995 book, To Renew America, Newt called Franklin Roosevelt “probably the greatest president of the 20th Century.” In subsequent speeches that can be found in the archives of C-SPAN, Gingrich sometimes dropped the “probably.” The irony is that the same man who has slammed Barack Obama for being a “food-stamp president” should be such a passionate admirer of FDR, who created the first federal food-stamp program in 1939. (The program was suspended during wartime in 1943, only to be revived by John F. Kennedy after he took office in 1961.)
Newt’s defenders point out that Ronald Reagan was also a great admirer of FDR’s leadership and frequently praised him. Yes, but Reagan was an unabashed liberal during Roosevelt’s tenure and voted for him in four presidential elections. His nostalgia was formed through a personal bond with the wartime leader that never faded. And when it came time to hang a portrait of a former president in the White House, Reagan chose that great tax-cutter and Yankee conservative, Calvin Coolidge — whom Roosevelt viewed with contempt and derision.
Somehow I don’t see a President Gingrich hanging a portrait of Silent Cal in a place of honor. It’s not that Newt Gingrich isn’t a conservative. It’s that he is, like Teddy Roosevelt, “a very complicated man.” For every conservative instinct Newt has, he also possesses a radical impulse for action and experimentation that is at its heart the instinct of liberals or even revolutionaries. Voters sizing up Newt would do well to consider both sides of his outsize personality — the one that reverts back to Reaganism on many specific issues, along with the one that pines for the government dynamism of the Roosevelts.
My thoughts, exactly. No matter how innovative or intelligent, that "demeanor" thing will make or break a President. In this case, it would likely be the latter.
My thoughts exactly! Why is this happening on this site? Reagan and Buckley would by rolling over in their graves- not because they love Newt so much- but because the piling on is so over the top.
Wow- its getting so that I have to consider the anti-Newt, pro-Romney bias whenever I read a political article on your site now! Your Newt bashing is tiresome and is making you look small and desperate. We will decide for ourselves who to vote for, thank you very much! .
It's amazing how Newt has become a touchstone for revealing who is establishment and who is not. Some figures have responded like I never would have imagined (Steyn, of all people, called him a benevolent fascist-- over the top!). But my own personal favorite, Thomas Sowell, has it right. He points out that we do not have a Reagan in the deck right now to play, so let's play the best card we've got. Not a placid individual in the model of Dole, Cain or Romney (what did Romney do while governor?) but someone who actually has a record for doing some heavy lifting, such as balancing a budget and welfare reform.
The totality of the vitriol dumped on Newt Gingrich is becoming untoward in the extreme. The truth of the matter that both major political parties were infected with the Progressive Virus by the early 20th century. One can look high and low, mainly in vain, for a republican politician of any standing who has not acquiesced, advocated, or created Statist nostrums for real or perceived problems.
All but one of the republican candidates for president is advocating or willing to perpetuate one form or another of massive intrusion into private affairs that are none of the government's business. That guy, Ron Paul, would, in following his delusional assessment human nature and of foreign actors, fail to defend the United States until we were already on our knees.
What is so frustrating for people who prize their freedom is that there is no political party of any standing in the United States that is a forthright advocate and defender of the Constitution in its original meaning and intent.
It is folly to expect the political class to extricate us from our current difficulties. The only memorable line in this campaign came from a candidate who claimed he would make the federal government "inconsequential" in our lives. That would actually be a tolerable solution, but the political class will have none of it.
The "The totality of the vitriol dumped on Newt Gingrich " in this article is...zero.
We need independants to beat Obama in 2012. Those indies who remeber Newt from the 90's will not vote for him. Those who don't remember him will be reminded by Obama, NBC, CBS and CNN. NR is doing us a favor by reminding us now.
Let's be wary of Newt for his admiration of the early progressives; as Jonah Goldberg thoroughly documented, the progressive impules wasn't a million miles from the statist impulses in Moscow, Rome, and Berlin.
But let us also remember that one of the great unfulfilled goals of the progressives has been the nationalization of health care. In writing that Medicare was sold on false pretenses, because its true goal wasn't old-age health insurance but ultimately a compulsary universal system, Andrew McCarthy traced the progressives' plans further back.
"FDR’s Committee on Economic Security initially intended to issue a health-care plan in conjunction with its universal, compulsory Social Security proposal in 1934. As Cato’s Charlotte Twight recounts, the former was dropped due to fear that pervasive opposition among the public and the medical profession would jeopardize passage of the latter. But Roosevelt got right back to it the day after he signed the 1935 Social Security Act, empowering the new Social Security Board to study the 'related' area of health insurance.
"There followed three decades of progressive proposals, each shot down by lawmakers animated by fierce public dissent. The Left realized the dream of socializing the health-care sector was not attainable in one fell swoop, so an incremental strategy was adopted: Get a foot in the door with less ambitious proposals; establish the precedent of government control while avoiding debate over the principle of government control. 'Incremental change,' said Medicare scholar Martha Derthick, 'has less potential for generating conflict than change that involves innovation in principle.' "
Newt Gingrich has shown statist tendencies even on health care, BUT:
1) The historic Republican congressional majority he helped achieve kept Clinton from trying a second attempt at Hillarycare.
2) Gingrich wasn't the governor whose state-level plan served as the precursor to Obamacare, a monstrosity that MUST be repealed.
Newt Gingrich is far too admiring of progressive politicians, but Mitt Romney has done at least as much in actually implementing progressive policies.
I simply do not think that there is a principled explanation for the panic around here about the viability of the former and the simultaneous placidity about the latter.
The "fundamental" and "profound" difference is that Newt advocated and continues to advocate intrusive gov't at the Federal level. Mitt did it at the state level and has said he won't do it at the Federal level.
Maybe it's b/c I live in a deep red state I can appreciate this distinction. Suppose Vermont wants to mandate unicycle travel, require health care cover sex change ops and make May Day a month long celebration of "worker's rights"? So be it. To use a common phrase down here: I ain't lost nothin' in Vermont.
If Newt is the answer then our side has very well forgotten the question, lost the pencil and is completing the scan tron test with a crayon.
Before progressivism mucked things up, this nation took great pains to address the question of whether states' rights includes the power to abridge individual rights. Even if the state government is constitutionally permitted to force its citizens to buy private goods and services, that doesn't make doing so a good idea, much less a conservative idea.
And suppose a Vermont politician who supported such leftist policies at the state level ran for President. If he claimed to have no intentions to implement the same agenda nationwide, he might well be a federalist, but he wouldn't be a conservative.
"If he claimed to have no intentions to implement the same agenda nationwide, he might well be a federalist, but he wouldn't be a conservative."
But if he is a former Speaker of the House and spent his entire career on the Hill and he advocates National solutions to local problems (not Federal solutions), he is a conservative?
I'm confused.
Was William F. Buckley in favor of the Department of Failing Inner City Schools Hires Students to Work Part Time as Janitors? I can't remember.
As wide-ranging as Newt's talking can be, I didn't think he actually advocated some federal program to subsidize and/or require inner-city schools to run a work program for their poorer students.
But reread the original comment.
I began by agreeing, "Let's be wary of Newt for his admiration of the early progressives."
And I concluded, in part, by writing, "Newt Gingrich is far too admiring of progressive politicians."
I think Newt might be marginally better than Mitt, if only because he's a fighter (compare McClellan and Grant), but I don't endorse Newt, much less do I do so wholeheartedly.
I think both are inadequate for the crisis that's coming.
Am I going to have to explicitly end each common with "a pox on both their houses" for that to be clear?
PS - I notice you didn't actually address the logic of my argument. Romney's defense of Romneycare may well be based in federalist principles, but it's not conservative because conservatism also involves the ideas of free markets and limited government.
Conservatism isn't encapsulated by the concept of states rights, and no criticism of Newt Gingrich will suddenly turn Mitt Romney into a principled conservative who can be trusted to do enough to avoid the predictable fiscal and cultural crisis that we face.
He might be less bad than Gingrich (though I disagree on that score), but that doesn't mean he's good enough to address what's coming and thereby merit our unqualified support.
Your criticism of Romney's terrible defense of Romneycare is well-founded, but I disagree about the relative merits of Romney and Gingrich: Romney is spared the progressive impulse that is so dangerous in Gingrich. He does seem to have arrived at basically conservative views, somewhat late in the day I admit, but better late than never. Even if he is less committed to conservatism than some of us think, as President he would be forced to govern from a basic, conservative point of view - the necessity of retaining the support of Congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan and of the conservative base of the Republican Party would guarantee that.
Romney is also much more electable than Newt: he certainly wouldn't have to spend the election season defending the idea of abolishing Federal Courts he disagrees with. This is the argument of NRO's editors, and I agree. If we go with Newt, the election becomes a referendum on him; if we go with Romney or one of the other candidates, the election becomes a referendum on Obama and we should win.
Newt is not the answer. However, the question is not which squish of a Republican is the least offensive to Liberals. This notion that only a moderate can sway independents has caused us to pick bad candidates. I'll support Mitt if he ends up being the candidate, but this is the wrong formula. You don't need to pander to groups. That's the Ramesh Ponuru formula.
Independents don't vote on whether a candidate is moderate. They vote on leadership foremost. Romney shows that he's willing to compromise. How about being will to persuade. Compromise is okay but a leader must be persuasive. One doesn't need to be nasty about the other side. We just need someone that can articulate conservative principles and has them in her or his bones. A governor that mandates health care for all does not get it. I don't care if he does it as the mayor of Plainsville, Kansas. It is not a coservative thought.
Well said. If you listen to Newt's own word and look at his actions over the years there isn't any doubt he is a big government guy. If everyone else decides he is the nominee, I will certainly cast my money and vote his direction. For all his many flaws, he is still better than what we have now.
