Bronze-level articleNewt Gingrich

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That hand belonged, not to Newt, but to his aide trying to get him off stage.

Newton Leroy "Newt" "Moon Base" Gingrich (Originally pronounced "Gingri'k,"[1] now pronounced Ging-rich) is a well-known American politician and paragon of family values, as well as the only living amphibian to have ever served in Congress. Well, when he's not on the lookout for the next former Mrs. Gingrich. He is the star of a new movie called "The Gingrich That Stole Freedom" (not really, but you get the picture).

He is infamous for leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for lying under oath about adulterous activities, while concurrently having an affair with a Chevrolet young[2] Capitol Hill staffer, Callista Bisek.[3] His contempt for late 20th century sexual mores leaves him with "political baggage" that is not easily overcome by his post-Speakership conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Contents

[edit] Contract On America

It doesn't matter what I do... People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live.
—Newt Gingrich (according to Marianne Gingrich)[4]

Newt Gingrich rose to the position of Speaker of the House after successfully building a movement which groomed up-and-coming Republican politicians, preparing them to run for the House of Representatives. In the 1994 midterm election, his Republicans gained control of the House, the Senate, most governorships, and most state legislatures, running on his ten-point "Contract On With America".

Gingrich immediately became one of the most influentially destructive politicians in modern American history. As Speaker, he set about dumbing down the intelligence of Congress. Gingrich fired the lawyers, economists, and investigators who work for committees rather than individual members by a third. He reduced the auditors, analysts, and subject-matter experts at the Government Accountability Office [GAO], the Congressional Research Service [CRS], and so on, by a third. He eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) entirely. Much of the research, number crunching, and legislative wording that used to be done by Capitol Hill staffers working for the government is now being done by outside experts, many of them former Hill staffers, working for lobbying firms, think tanks, consultancies, trade associations, and PR outfits. Instead of independent committees enacting research and objectivity, think tanks have been empowered to feed bullshit into Congressmen. In fact, conservative think tanks became the only outside group allowed to brief members and their staff at weekly lunches of the Republican Study Committee, the policy and messaging arm of House conservatives. This "brain drain" created a significant decline in Congress’ own ability to monitor and investigate the government. The number of hearings on policy development and oversight plummeted by nearly 50 percent in the House and 25% in Senate. [5]

By the time of the Tea Party movement, Congress cut its budget by another 20 percent, a far higher ratio than any other federal agency, leading to staff layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, and a general sense of disillusionment. Professional staffers (who knew what had worked in the past, what members’ preferences and personalities were like, and how to draft a bill that would pass) were laid off by Gingrich -- about 800 of them. In 1993, Congress employed nearly 2,150 professional committee staff; in 2011, there were just 1,316, according to the most recent data. The Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service, and now-defunct Office of Technology Assessment operated on a bipartisan basis, offering measured reports on topics suggested by House members themselves. Sometimes, these agencies act as helpful librarians, and sometimes they’re more like referees, carefully adjudicating among the competing quantitative claims of various members and outside groups. All of which Gingrich hated and set about to eradicate.

His adamant refusal to compromise, and his desire to destroy everything in government that wasn't in his vision, became the driving force of the Republican Party, which has now reached its absolute extreme in the Tea Party movement. He himself explained that he wanted to cultivate a loathing for Congress itself, while simultaneously restructuring it so as to eliminate anything that opposed his vision, like committee chairmen, contradictory facts from legislative support agencies, more moderate Republicans, and the minority party. Under his new rules, committee chairs were instead appointed by the Speaker, instead of seniority or a vote by committee members. Subcommittees also lost their ability to set their own agendas and schedules; that too largely became the prerogative of the Speaker. At the same time, Gingrich imposed six-year term limits and required chairs to be reappointed (by the Speaker) every two years. Finally, Gingrich protected, and in some cases bulked up, the staff leadership offices, which were given the task of writing major pieces of legislation and handing them to the committees. All politicians were utterly fucked; whether or not they advanced in their careers, whether they were reappointed or on which committee they were appointed, would be determined by party leaders based on their subservience. Gingrich's House passed 124 pro-conservative measures in 1995, more than double the 53 that Tip O’Neill’s House passed in 1981.

Due to Gingrich, the Speakership often dictates to committees what it wants bills to look like or drafts them outright. Instead of learning deeply about a given subject, debating various policy options, engaging in the nitty-gritty of a topic over the course of years and sometimes decades, committee members nowadays are often asked either to reverse-engineer a piece of legislation based on party leadership’s description of what kind of bill they’d like to see or to simply vote on a bill they did not write to begin with.

Newt Gingrich, more than any other, is the man personally responsible for the current insanity of Congress today, and most especially the current crop of extremists in the Republican Party. However, his skills as a combative back-bencher did not translate to the ability to ride herd on the GOP House members, and he was eventually ousted by his own party. Now, he's a worker for Fox News and a heavy promoter of the Tea Party, the ideological successors to his reign of demagoguery as Speaker.

[edit] Comeback?

In May 2011, Gingrich officially announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination for President. He was off to a rocky start, first daring to criticize new GOP darling Paul Ryan's deficit reduction plan and catching massive flak from his party colleagues as a result. Next came the revelation that he had run up a tab of half a million dollars at luxury jeweler Tiffany's,[6][7] which he didn't think he'd need to disclose. Newt proceeded to take a two-week vacation to the Mediterranean while the other contenders were busy barnstorming and fundraising. Upon his return, he had to learn that most of his senior campaign staffers were fed up with his half-assed approach and decided to desert the sinking ship.[8]

At a couple of points in the campaign (in November and December 2011 and for a moment after winning the South Carolina caucuses in January 2012), Gingrich was the frontrunner, rising above Mitt Romney in the polls in some intervals. Most of the time, though, he was at most the "not Romney" candidate. However, even this "lead" was short-lived. Gingrich lost the spot to Ron Paul, who even more quickly lost it to Rick Santorum. [9] [10] During his surge, front-runner Mitt Romney (or, "officially," a PAC supporting Mitt Romney) unleashed a near-devastating barrage of ads in Iowa targeting him. This was most likely the cause for Newt's poor showing in the Hawkeye State.

Since then, Gingrich's main objective seems to be a quest of vengeance to utterly destroy Mitt Romney pointing out how unfair Romney's been to him. He won a decisive victory over Romney in the South Carolina presidential primaries.[11]

Gingrich announced on April 25 that he would drop out of the race and support Mitt Romney, the "Massachusetts Moderate". [12]

[edit] Newt!

[S]omebody said, 'he's a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like,' but he is more plausible than the other guys they’ve been pushing up.
Paul Krugman regarding Newt's rise to the top of the woeful field of 2012 Republican presidential candidates.[13]

Why anyone with the forenames Newton Leroy would willingly acknowledge an apparent relation to a cold blooded semi-aquatic animal is a question that only he can answer. That Newt is a living fossil and closer than any other animal to the transitional form between fishes and land vertebrates That Newt was either created on the fourth day with the creatures that move in the water or on the sixth day with the land animals, God couldn't make up His mind when to do it.[14]

[edit] The law and the Newt

Stephen Colbert has pointed out that Newt Gingrich has broken the law came close to breaking the law but took advantage of a loophole so he could do what the law tries to prevent without also doing jail time. That Newt is really a slippery animal, anyway Newt told a supporter who is spending more money than Newt is allowed "to scrub ads attacking Mitt Romney for possible inaccuracies."[15] Try and stick within the type of campaigning that the law wants Newt.

[edit] Flip-Flopping

In 2011, Gingrich accused Obama of "flip-flopping" on the Libyan uprising, but should have learned that throwing stones when living in a glass house isn't a good idea.

Compare:

There's almost a conspiracy of silence, if it's an anti-American government. If you're the Iranians, if you are the Libyans, for that matter, if you're the Chinese, you are able to suppress your people and the American government stays quiet.[16]

To:

Prior to March 3, I would have strongly recommended an Eisenhower-Reagan model...you should have said nothing. Be very quiet. Condemn the violence. Do everything you can covertly.

Or how about:

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gaddafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more like they were to survive, provided help to the rebels to replace him. I mean, the idea that we're confused about a man who has been an anti-American dictator since 1969 just tells you how inept this administration is.[17]

and:

Let me draw the distinction. I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Gaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.

[edit] Secular-socialist machine

Newt's new favorite catchphrase is "secular-socialist machine," which comes from the subtitle of his book To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine. According to Newt, Barack Obama is the most radical president in US history and is using Saul Alinsky tactics and Chicago politics to refashion the US into a dreaded "high-tax low-growth" European state. Apparently, "the secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union did."[18]

[edit] Family life

Gingrich is an orphan; he suffered the incredible tragedy of losing his stepfather when he was only 53 and his mother when he was 60. It is amazing that he was able to overcome the difficulties of not being able to collect Social Security before having his parents ripped away from him. The fates are indeed cruel.

Contrary to rumor, Newt did not divorce his first wife on her deathbed; in actuality, he tried to get her sign off her right to alimony and child support while she was semi-conscious in the hospital, recovering from tumor surgery.[19] Shortly after his second wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he announced his intention to divorce her, and later had his first two marriages declared invalid by Catholic authorities, so that that he could marry his mistress of six years in the Catholic Church.[20] Newt definitely did not want an open marriage; we have to believe that because he says so.[21] His current wife, Callista (winner of the reality show, America's Next Former Mrs. Gingrich), sings in the choir of Washington D.C.'s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.[22]

Fox News Shrink Keith Ablow claims Newt's infidelity and open marriage policy[23] could make him a superior president.[24] Rush Limbaugh said something similar, which is unsurprising given his own philandering. Other pundits have chimed in, with a fairly consistent and blatant misunderstanding of what an "open marriage" actually is.

[edit] Quotes

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.[25]
I have two grandchildren: Maggie is 11; Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.[26]
A mere 40 years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. Now it is not only a sport [but] in the Olympics. ... And there's a whole new world of opportunity opening up that didn't even exist 30 years ago or 40 years ago, and no bureaucrat would have invented it. And that's what freedom is all about.[27]
I, frankly, would be really worried if somebody assured me that nothing in their faith would affect their judgments, because then I’d wonder, where’s your judgment — how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?[28]
The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.
—PR release from Gingrich's press secretary Rick Tyler[29]

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndkzs4XHTI0&feature=player_detailpage#t=15s
  2. 23 years his junior (which is either bad or awesome depending on your prejudices involving sex and age)
  3. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Acknowledges Having Affair During Clinton Impeachment
  4. Newt Gingrich's Ex Speaks Out and Its Ugly
  5. [Fuck all these important government agencies!]
  6. Slate: Gingrich Had Six-Figure Tab at Tiffany’s
  7. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43500870/ns/politics-decision_2012/t/advisers-gingrich-thought-tiffany-credit-line-was-private/Gingrich
  8. Newt Gingrich Advisers Resign En Masse Politico
  9. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-12/romney-seeks-to-deflect-attacks-from-rivals-over-10-000-wager.html
  10. http://www.decodedscience.com/game-changer-in-iowa-paul-gains-substantial-lead-in-two-polls/8205
  11. South Carolina poll: Gingrich triumphs over Romney
  12. http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2012/04/newt_gingrich_drops_out_of_rac.html Newt Gingrich Drop Out of Race, NJ.com
  13. This Week with Christiane Amanpour (20 November 2011)
  14. Or perhaps the well known UK newt fancier & one-time Labour luminary Ken Livingstone might have some sympathy
  15. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/Vox-News/2012/0118/Will-Jon-Stewart-go-to-jail-for-running-Stephen-Colbert-s-super-PAC
  16. [1]
  17. [2]
  18. Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine, Human Events
  19. Gore, Dangelo.The Gingrich Divorce Myth, FactCheck.org, December 2, 2011
  20. Carpenter, Megan. Newt Gingrich’s Second Wife Dishes Hard To Esquire: His Money Woes, His Philandering, His Meltdown, August 11, 2010.
  21. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16643430
  22. Callista Gingrich in the spotlight, Washington Post, December 14, 2011.
  23. Ex-wife: Newt Gingrich wanted 'open marriage'
  24. Fox News: Infidelity might make Newt better president
  25. http://www.quotesandpoem.com/quotes/showquotes/author/newt-gingrich/120470
  26. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/what.php
  27. http://www.slate.com/id/1880/
  28. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Xke_AYffY
  29. Be sure to check out John Lithgow's performance of this gem.


United States 2012 Presidential election articles on RationalWiki
Topics: 2012 U.S. Presidential Election - Democratic Party - Debate:Religious beliefs and public office - Republican Party - Same-sex marriage - United States Electoral College
Candidates: Michele Bachmann - Newt Gingrich - Mitt Romney - Rick Santorum - Ron Paul
Winner: Barack Obama (incumbent)
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