Pam Platt: Newt Gingrich? Really?
Newt Gingrich's history worth recalling
Written by Pam Platt
Newt Gingrich?
Really?
What part of the 1990s don’t voters remember? Or understand?
Before anyone feels the urge to hop up and down and slap “elitist” on my disbelieving, furrowed brow — Newt likes that word — please know three things: Forget breakfast, I’ve never even snacked at Tiffany’s. I’ve never winged off for a Greek cruise at an inopportune time (or ever, for that matter) and had a stiffed staff bail on me. And no one has ever paid me $1.5 million to be a “historian.”
Newt Gingrich? He has rolled in all the above, and then some, details of which have been painstakingly reported to an apparently amnesiac electorate.
But abracadabra, all that, and more, seems to have disappeared and he is so back that it’s as if his campaign has had a mega-dose of Viagra.
Given up for politically dead just a few months ago, he is now the candidate of choice for 50 percent of likely primary voters in Florida — a spike of 39 points in little over a month. On Thursday, the same day the poll story broke, the former speaker of the House almost giddily told ABC News, “I am going to be the nominee.”
Now that’s the Newt, king of the overreach, some of us know — and don’t love.
I know I should be rubbing my hands together like Christmas came early — does anyone remember how spectacularly Newt flamed out the last time he was on the national stage? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone? — but what I really want to do is lay into the Pepcid AC because I do remember and it was ugly.
He got to Washington from the classroom by saying and embodying statements like this one: “I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”
No coincidence that his years as speaker of the House were marked by a toxicity that pollutes today’s politics. That poison included a government shutdown and culminated in the impeachment of a president for only the second time in American history. Of course President Bill Clinton foolishly provided ammunition to his political enemies, dangerous hypocrites like Newt who knew a thing or three about personal indiscretions, even as they were roasting the president for his. No matter. They nevertheless went to destructive lengths to undo two presidential elections … on Newt’s watch.
Pesky history reminds us that Clinton, who is actually able to cough up a kind word or two for his yesteryear Ahab, outlasted the speaker.
The Senate sanely declined to go along with Newt’s House impeachment debacle (“God almighty, take the vote and get it over with!” yelled a Senate gallery protester before he was dragged away and arrested) and despite the grotesquerie of the movement to oust him, the president rode out his term and left office with a budget surplus and very healthy approval numbers. The surplus is long gone, but the approval numbers remain high.
Newt? Ah, well, his fortunes — literal and political — have waxed and waned, kind of like his love life.
The gentleman from Georgia quit his job as speaker in 1999 with same-party wanna-bes yapping at his heels, and he hightailed it in what some would call disgrace. Others would call it karma — not so instant, but quick enough.
Newt had led the young Turks who rode Democrat Jim Wright out of the speaker’s post over ethics violations involving bulk book purchases, speaker fees and a job for wifey.
Six short years later, Newt held the speaker’s gavel and wielded it like an anvil for an even shorter three to four years.
And just 10 years after he had helped depose Wright for his wrongs, Newt had his own ethics violations to contend with. The taste of his own medicine: using tax-deductible donations for political purposes and lying to the House ethics sticklers.
His peers slapped him with an unprecedented $300,000 fine, but the home folks kept the faith and re-elected him despite the scandal.
Here’s how he repaid their loyalty: Just days after his re-election, Newt announced his resignation and a month later, he exited stage right, or left, or center, what’s the diff. Depends on who was paying him, or which interest group or voter bloc he was trying to woo. Still does. So pay attention, prospective woo-ees, to another Newt nugget:
“What is the purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If (voters) care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots.”
The guiding expediency behind that thinking, and acting, presents Newt with inconvenient truths about his own shifting stands on some issues, including global warming, even as he has whacked at the swinging Mitt Romney piñata that’s stuffed with situational politics.
Sure, primary opponent Ron Paul is nailing Newt for his flip-flops, that’s business, but perhaps the most stringent take on Newt’s pivots for coin has been conservative columnist George Will’s recent withering smack down of the Newt changeling:
“He’s the classic rental politician. People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He’s gonna hope people concentrate on that, rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich, who has served the ethanol lobby.”
Who’s paying the rent these days?
The politician-“historian”-influence-peddler also has been an author, and Newt has dealt with alternate history in his novels. As a presidential candidate he is doing the same alternate job with his own past.
For those who lived through the phony moral posturing of the Newt Nineties, the most jaw-dropping shape shift for 21st Century Newt is that the man with the “colorful personal life,” as Will politely put it, is pitching himself to religious and values voters as a chastened convert — and a rock-ribbed social conservative, talking loyalty oaths, putting inner-city 9-year-olds to work and a constitutional marriage amendment — and doing so, straight-faced, with his third wife by his side.
Way back in 1978, before Newt was elected to his first term in Congress, he told an audience of college Republicans, “you're old enough to know that all human beings are weak and frail and occasionally tempted, probably even one or two of you have been tempted. So you don't want to trust politicians, you want to hold them accountable …”
Today’s spiking poll numbers indicate that Newt’s line of credit with likely voters is as strong as his (now closed) line of credit with Tiffany’s.
Given his past performance, I don't get it.
Newt Gingrich?
Really?
Jon Huntsman? Anyone? Anyone?
Pam Platt is an editorial writer and columnist for The Courier-Journal; her columns appear in the Sunday Forum. Call her at (502) 582-4578; email her at pplatt@courier-journal.com
Written by Pam Platt
Newt Gingrich?
Really?
What part of the 1990s don’t voters remember? Or understand?
Before anyone feels the urge to hop up and down and slap “elitist” on my disbelieving, furrowed brow — Newt likes that word — please know three things: Forget breakfast, I’ve never even snacked at Tiffany’s. I’ve never winged off for a Greek cruise at an inopportune time (or ever, for that matter) and had a stiffed staff bail on me. And no one has ever paid me $1.5 million to be a “historian.”
Newt Gingrich? He has rolled in all the above, and then some, details of which have been painstakingly reported to an apparently amnesiac electorate.
But abracadabra, all that, and more, seems to have disappeared and he is so back that it’s as if his campaign has had a mega-dose of Viagra.
Given up for politically dead just a few months ago, he is now the candidate of choice for 50 percent of likely primary voters in Florida — a spike of 39 points in little over a month. On Thursday, the same day the poll story broke, the former speaker of the House almost giddily told ABC News, “I am going to be the nominee.”
Now that’s the Newt, king of the overreach, some of us know — and don’t love.
I know I should be rubbing my hands together like Christmas came early — does anyone remember how spectacularly Newt flamed out the last time he was on the national stage? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone? — but what I really want to do is lay into the Pepcid AC because I do remember and it was ugly.
He got to Washington from the classroom by saying and embodying statements like this one: “I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”
No coincidence that his years as speaker of the House were marked by a toxicity that pollutes today’s politics. That poison included a government shutdown and culminated in the impeachment of a president for only the second time in American history. Of course President Bill Clinton foolishly provided ammunition to his political enemies, dangerous hypocrites like Newt who knew a thing or three about personal indiscretions, even as they were roasting the president for his. No matter. They nevertheless went to destructive lengths to undo two presidential elections … on Newt’s watch.
Pesky history reminds us that Clinton, who is actually able to cough up a kind word or two for his yesteryear Ahab, outlasted the speaker.
The Senate sanely declined to go along with Newt’s House impeachment debacle (“God almighty, take the vote and get it over with!” yelled a Senate gallery protester before he was dragged away and arrested) and despite the grotesquerie of the movement to oust him, the president rode out his term and left office with a budget surplus and very healthy approval numbers. The surplus is long gone, but the approval numbers remain high.
Newt? Ah, well, his fortunes — literal and political — have waxed and waned, kind of like his love life.
The gentleman from Georgia quit his job as speaker in 1999 with same-party wanna-bes yapping at his heels, and he hightailed it in what some would call disgrace. Others would call it karma — not so instant, but quick enough.
Newt had led the young Turks who rode Democrat Jim Wright out of the speaker’s post over ethics violations involving bulk book purchases, speaker fees and a job for wifey.
Six short years later, Newt held the speaker’s gavel and wielded it like an anvil for an even shorter three to four years.
And just 10 years after he had helped depose Wright for his wrongs, Newt had his own ethics violations to contend with. The taste of his own medicine: using tax-deductible donations for political purposes and lying to the House ethics sticklers.
His peers slapped him with an unprecedented $300,000 fine, but the home folks kept the faith and re-elected him despite the scandal.
Here’s how he repaid their loyalty: Just days after his re-election, Newt announced his resignation and a month later, he exited stage right, or left, or center, what’s the diff. Depends on who was paying him, or which interest group or voter bloc he was trying to woo. Still does. So pay attention, prospective woo-ees, to another Newt nugget:
“What is the purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If (voters) care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots.”
The guiding expediency behind that thinking, and acting, presents Newt with inconvenient truths about his own shifting stands on some issues, including global warming, even as he has whacked at the swinging Mitt Romney piñata that’s stuffed with situational politics.
Sure, primary opponent Ron Paul is nailing Newt for his flip-flops, that’s business, but perhaps the most stringent take on Newt’s pivots for coin has been conservative columnist George Will’s recent withering smack down of the Newt changeling:
“He’s the classic rental politician. People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He’s gonna hope people concentrate on that, rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich, who has served the ethanol lobby.”
Who’s paying the rent these days?
The politician-“historian”-influence-peddler also has been an author, and Newt has dealt with alternate history in his novels. As a presidential candidate he is doing the same alternate job with his own past.
For those who lived through the phony moral posturing of the Newt Nineties, the most jaw-dropping shape shift for 21st Century Newt is that the man with the “colorful personal life,” as Will politely put it, is pitching himself to religious and values voters as a chastened convert — and a rock-ribbed social conservative, talking loyalty oaths, putting inner-city 9-year-olds to work and a constitutional marriage amendment — and doing so, straight-faced, with his third wife by his side.
Way back in 1978, before Newt was elected to his first term in Congress, he told an audience of college Republicans, “you're old enough to know that all human beings are weak and frail and occasionally tempted, probably even one or two of you have been tempted. So you don't want to trust politicians, you want to hold them accountable …”
Today’s spiking poll numbers indicate that Newt’s line of credit with likely voters is as strong as his (now closed) line of credit with Tiffany’s.
Given his past performance, I don't get it.
Newt Gingrich?
Really?
Jon Huntsman? Anyone? Anyone?
Pam Platt is an editorial writer and columnist for The Courier-Journal; her columns appear in the Sunday Forum. Call her at (502) 582-4578; email her at pplatt@courier-journal.com
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