The Newt Gingrich critics go thermonuclear
It can really take one’s breath away to see the explosion of hits and hit pieces on Newt Gingrich—from Republicans and/or conservatives—in the past 48 hours. (The Drudge Report has played a big role in marshaling and promoting the links and stories.) It’s not news that Newt Gingrich is less than perfect, and although I continue to support him against Romney, I’m certainly not going to try to maintain he is a saint or a conservative of unimpeachable purity. Yet, the criticisms of Gingrich, while overwhelming in their sheer number and passion, do not convince me that Newt is less of a conservative than Mitt Romney. Some of them are quite strange.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (the founder of The American Spectator) has written one of the most widely read slams of Newt, published yesterday: William Jefferson Gingrich. I’m quite willing listen to criticisms of Gingrich from people who might know something that I don’t, but this column weirded me out so much in its opening paragraphs that I completely lost sympathy with where the writer is coming from. In those first two paragraphs, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. tells his readers (in a tone that suggests that it is not even up for debate) that former president Bill Clinton is both charming and “drop-dead beautiful.”
Perhaps in your world, Mr. Tyrrell, but not in mine. Bill Clinton has virtually always come across to me as dishonest, sleazy and utterly unprincipled. Those are not, for me, the ingredients of charm. As for drop-dead beautiful … well, again, Mr. Tyrrell possesses a perspective that eludes me, and all the more dramatically in this case.
Suffice it to say, I do not think that Newt Gingrich is currently fighting for the votes of those, like Mr. Tyrrell, who find Bill Clinton both charming in personality and beautiful in physical aspect.
The rest of Mr. Tyrrell’s column rehashes a lot of criticisms we have already heard to the effect that Gingrich was not a good leader in Congress and not a true conservative. Although younger than R. Emmett, I too lived through that era, and I simply remember things differently. In my mind Gingrich was a highly effective Republican leader who was ultimately taken out after years of being demonized by the media and the (drop-dead beautiful) Clinton spin machine. His public image was assuredly toxic in the end, and certainly House Republicans didn’t want their own electoral prospects to be dragged down by such a lightning rod. And certainly Gingrich contributed to the problem with various personal failings. However, on substance, he had succeeded in leading the Republican majority (which he was highly instrumental in achieving in the first place) to passing many of the serious reforms that had been promised in the “Contract with America” (which Gingrich gets credit for devising). I like the substance of what Gingrich got done. (Just read his Wikipedia entry, for Pete’s sake.) I don’t like that he was vilified non-stop in the media from the very first moment that the Republicans won the House in 1994 (“How the Gingrich stole Christmas”) and I don’t like that the vilification succeeded.
I also don’t like to hear so many conservatives today pushing the line on Gingrich that the liberal media and the (drop-dead beautiful) Clinton spin-machine concocted. Accepting their narrative is not the way to go. Effective conservative Republicans always get demonized. I am of the point of view that we should reject such tactics and question the premise of such characterizations, rather than buying into them lock, stock and barrel.
Count me as unconvinced that Gingrich’s record does not show him to be a more reliable and effective conservative leader than Mitt Romney, given his record.
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As for the revelations elsewhere that Newt Gingrich criticized Ronald Reagan and his administration on multiple occasions while Reagan was in office: Gingrich deserves this for wrapping himself in Reagan’s mantle so frequently (for which I made fun of him the other day). Certainly his criticisms at that time don’t show him in a wonderful light, but if everyone who criticized Reagan during his presidency were run out of the conservative movement, I fear that we’d be left only with Nancy. It is a tribute to Reagan that he succeeded in so much even with the opposition—at times—of many on the conservative side of things. I remember very clearly in particular that he faced a great deal of skepticism and mockery from conservatives for his arms reduction negotiations with Gorbachev. So, Gingrich deserves the knock, but I also think he deserves to be judged more on his own later achievements in leadership rather than his fire-brand rhetoric during the 1980s.
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I don’t have a vote in Florida. But if I did, I’m afraid I would not be getting in line. Not with old R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., and not even with Ann Coulter. And not, especially, when in denigrating Newt Gingrich, the alternative that we are told we must embrace is Mitt Romney. In this case, I’m willing to concede that Mitt may well be drop-dead beautiful in a way that Newt will never be, but as for the rest of it: it just doesn’t add up.
