Newt Gingrich

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Overview

Newt Gingrich was Republican Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1998 (during the Clinton administration). He was succeeded by Dennis Hastert (Bob Livingston was initially chosen for the position, but resigned in the wake of a sex scandal before serving).

Gingrich is possibly best remembered for originating and promoting the Contract with America, now being reprised as the 21st Century Contract with America.

Descriptions & Comments

Dick Meyer, editorial director of CBS News said, in Good Riddance To The Gingrichites:

More than the others, Newton Leroy Gingrich lived out a very special hypocrisy. In addition to the above biographical dissonance, Gingrich was one of the most sharp-tongued, articulate and persuasive attack dogs in modern politics. His favorite target was the supposed immorality and corruption of the Democratic Party. With soaring rhetoric, he condemned his opponents as anti-American and dangerous to our country's family values — "grotesque" was a favorite word.

Yet this was a man who was divorced twice — the first time when his wife was hospitalized for cancer treatment, the second time after an affair was revealed.

Gingrich made his bones in the party by relentlessly attacking Democratic corruption, yet he was hounded from office because of a series of serious ethics questions. He posed as a reformer of the House, yet championed a series of deforms that made the legislative process more closed, more conducive to hiding special interest favors and less a forum for genuine debate.

And he did it all with epic sanctimony.

David Brin said here:

Okay folks, I admit it. I had been nursing illusions about Newt Gingrich being some kind of retro "sincere neoconservative" figure who had been exiled because he would not go along with the extreme drop into madness.

Perhaps the fact that he considers himself to be a sci fi guy kind of influenced me. Also respect for the brilliant polemics of the first Contract with America.

Okay, enough. I will now wipe those illusions away. (A modernist must be willing to revise, under the glaring light of citokate.) The fellow has gone completely bonkers.

Not only the things he says, but for idiotically imagining that the masters will bring him back into their good graces, just for saying $%#*! like he's been saying.

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