Since Ramesh, Mona, Yuval & Co have got out the tire irons, I figured I might as well pile on. But then a reader from the Cayman Islands reminded me that I’d said pretty much everything I have to say about Newt in November 1998 — in the London Spectator, upon his resignation as speaker. For those Newtroids who huff that I must be in the tank for Mitt (that’s some tank), November 1998 is 13 years ago, when I’m not sure I’d even heard of Mitt Romney.
Anyway, back then, after a brisk trot through his collected Brainstorms-of-the-Week — “The Triangle of American Progress,” “The Four Great Truths,” “The Four Pillars of American Civilization,” “The Five Pillars of the 21st Century,” “The Nine Zones of Creativity,” “The Fourteen Steps to Renewing American Civilization,” The Thirty-Nine Steps to the Five Year Plan of the Six Flags of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers of the Nine-Inch Nails of Renewing Civilizational Progress for 21st Century America, etc, I concluded:
The Democrats demonised Newt as an extreme right-wing crazy. They were right — apart from the ‘extreme’ and ‘right-wing’, that is. Most of the above seem more like the burblings of a frustrated self-help guru than blueprints for conservative government. For example, Pillar No. 5 of the ‘Five Pillars of American Civilisation’ is: ‘Total quality management’. Unfortunately for Newt, the person who most needed a self-help manual was him — How to Win Friends and Influence People for a start. After last week’s election, Republicans have now embarked on the time-honoured ritual, well known to British Tories and Labour before them, of bickering over whether they did badly because they were too extreme or because they were too moderate. In Newt’s case, the answer is both. He spent the last year pre-emptively surrendering on anything of legislative consequence, but then, feeling bad at having abandoned another two or three of his ‘Fourteen Steps to Renewing American Civilisation’, he’d go on television and snarl at everybody in sight. . . . For Republicans it was the worst of all worlds: a lily-livered ninny whom everyone thinks is a ferocious right-wing bastard.
That’s how it would go this time round. We’d wind up with a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and Alvin Tofler who canoodled on the sofa with Nancy Pelosi demanding Big Government climate-change conventional-wisdom punitive liberalism just as the rest of the planet was finally getting off the bandwagon . . . but the media would still insist on dusting off their 1994 “The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas” graphics.
Ouch.
That said, there seems to be a lot of overlap and inefficiency in the Gingrich's "Brainstorms-of-the-Week" collection. If only he would run some Six Sigma over it....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYeah, and of course, we would lose dramatically in 2012.
Gingrich is the ultimate gift to Democratic Partisans.
The folly of the push is vivid, and is sinking - tanking credibility with everyone who bizarrely begins to create a fantasy about the disgraced former Speaker who is a tired Beltway Insider grafting 1.8 Million via Fannie and Freddie.
It doesn't become much more embarrassing than this.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"a lily-livered ninny whom everyone thinks is a ferocious right-wing bastd"
Perfect.
Oh, too funny, I couldn't paste the quote without editing "bastd". Someone needs to do some work on the "objectionable language" filter here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo when Newt becomes the nominee Mark, Remesh, Mona and Yuval will collectively acknowledge their irrelevance right?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"That’s how it would go this time round. We’d wind up with a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and Alvin Tofler who canoodled on the sofa with Nancy Pelosi demanding Big Government climate-change conventional-wisdom punitive liberalism just as the rest of the planet was finally getting off the bandwagon …but the media would still insist on dusting off their 1994 “The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas” graphics."
This is basically the situation we currently have in the UK. Cameron and his ruling clique are all in favour of big government, big spending and all their policies are rooted in the 'conventional wisdom punitive liberalism' you describe. There is no real difference between the policies of this government and those of the Labour government which preceeded it or the proposed policies of the Labour party which was defeated at the last election.
However, Cameron has been regularly portrayed in media as even more 'right wing' than Thatcher and his government cannot be mentioned without talk of 'brutal cuts' etc etc. So, when his government ends in failure (as all the socialist Tory administrations have since the end of WWII and the - until Thatcher - acceptance of the 'post-war consensus' established by Attlee nationalising everything) he will still be accorded a place in national consciousness as a right wing ideologue who followed free-market, neoliberal economic policies despite all evidence to the contrary.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe same thing happened with GW Bush, who's domestic agenda was anything but conservative but which was savaged by the Left as if it were. Left-leaning NRO posters frequently resort to the argument that since a) Bush's policies were terrible and b) Bush was a conservative, then c) conservatism is terrible. That dog won't hunt.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell said, Mark.
I am glad you have realized what many of us have as well: Both Romney & Gingrich are just awful candidates, and either one would be a disasterous president if elected.
Better than Obama? Sure, but my lawn gnome would be better than Obama. The point is, the GOP should (and must) do better than these two clowns.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI like Ron Paul more and more. He's honest and genuine.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd be on board if he knew how to better frame and/or implement libertarianism on pragmatic grounds. He's far too much an idealist without recognizing the limits of idealism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEspecially with regard to foreign policy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI see that it was just as popular in 1998 to trash Newt Gingrich personally as it is today. Yay for our team!
If this is how people who are theoretically aligned with you politically talk about you, it's no wonder Republicans in Congress go in there with high ideals and leave with the reputation of the commie rat bast***s they are portrayed as by their political allies and x10 by their political enemies. This column is precisely why it does not matter who we nominate. They will be destroyed utterly, and therefore will endeavor to not do much of anything consequential at all.
Pilloried as traitors to cause or country (or both), they can look forward to spending the rest of their lives as enemies of the state. "After America" is assured because of people like Mark Steyn. Come, join the circular firing squad everyone!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePrecisely.
This I agree with.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"If this is how people who are theoretically aligned with you politically talk about you, it's no wonder Republicans in Congress go in there with high ideals and leave with the reputation of the commie rat bast***s they are portrayed as…"
Oh, stop clutching your pearls, Martha. It is our responsibility as U.S. citizens to excoriate our elected representatives when they fail to represent us.
Newt Gingrich often sounds like a conservative, but if you take the time to analyze both his track record and his rhetoric, you can see that he himself accepts the Left's assumptions about the role of the government: to fix society. Newt simply wants to use the levers of power to implement "conservative" fixes, when in fact the conservative position would deny that government has a role in fixing society at all.
Mark's criticisms of Newt come from the Right, not the Left. The Left would call Gringrich "mean and miserly" and all the other boilerplate ad hominems they reserve for the Right. Mark et al., measure Newt's actual behavior against conservative standards and find it horribly wanting.
Which we MUST do if we want our representatives to actually represent us—make them sorely regret going off OUR agenda.
Given that what conservatives most want for Christmas is a reduction in the size and scope of government, it makes no sense to support someone who has himself, through his own votes and proposals, done exactly the opposite.
Pointing out Newt's actual record is NOT "trashing" him; it's ANALYZING him. If it makes Newt look bad, that's not Mark's fault: it's Newt's.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOk, let's compare Gingrich to Boehner as a stand-in for how a President Romney would probably govern. Now, which of those two, Gingrich or Boehner, shut down the gov't? Which one of those two forced a Democrat president to bend to the will of the voters by rolling back Welfare? Which of those two produced four balanced budgets? Which of those two caused a Democrat president to declare that "The era of big government is over?" I seem to recall Romney telling the GOP to cut deals with Obama this year. Fail.
Newt worked "our agenda", largely succeeded, and look at how our side reacts. I don't care who people vote for, but I do mind that Big Conservative Accomplishments get tossed aside in favor of personality quirks, sex partners and TQM. This was a poorly written blog post referencing a long-ago column that wasn't interesting or insightful when he wrote it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Which one of those two forced a Democrat president to bend to the will of the voters by rolling back Welfare?"
Which of those two caused a Democrat president to declare that "The era of big government is over?""
Newt has always worked best when there is a villian, and he had one in Clinton. But I don't view that character trait as presidential, as a leader, one who needs to rally people to a cause. The 1994 GOP sweep was a grass roots ground swell, with Newt a valuable spokesman riding the wave.
I'm not diminishing his accomplishments, but I have no reason to believe as president he would have the temperament and discipline to rally independents to his cause. Beating up the Democrats is great sport, but it's not what the average voter wants to hear from their president.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't agree that the purpose of governing is to sway Independents. Obama has done a great job reminding that same group of the abject disaster of Liberalism applied.
There will be no shortage of villains for Newt in 2013. Some, as we have seen by Mr. Steyn's post, may in fact reside in the GOP. Thus far, Newt has done a masterful job not taking the bait despite some vicious attacks. He will withstand those attacks better than Romney.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood point.Once elected, the president doesn't have to sway independents, that is unless all he's thinking about is yet another election. At this precarious time, we need someone willing to go at our problems tooth and nail with only minor concern for bringing along the independents. The proof needed to bring them over will be in the pudding, which won't be made if making it, and making it quickly, isn't the number one priority.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo begin with, I don't think John Boehner has exactly been winning the plaudits of the posters on NRO up to this time. So the point of reference is a bit skewed.
But the Senate was in Republican control in the 90s, so we have to admit that this limited Boehner's bargaining power. And even so, wasn't it Boehner who got Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts, if only for 2 years?
Regarding Pres. Clinton, aren't we forgetting (notwithstanding talk radio's disagreement) that Bill Clinton was a genuine moderate Democrat, while Obama merely feigns moderation?
Clinton would bend, Obama won't.
P.S. criticism of Gingrich, is not support for Romney.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYES!
Throughout this year's budget debates, I've been dismayed at the posters here acting like Boehner was failing to use his power when he only had ONE of the two houses. So many of those mad at Boehner seemed to forget that the Senate exists.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe GOP House had all the leverage it needed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse