Newt Gingrich is always wrapping himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, but at the time, when Newt was a Congressman, he was best known for criticizing Reagan’s policies and for putting down the president. So says Reagan administration official Elliott Abrams, who was there:
Here at home, we faced vicious criticism from leading Democrats — Ted Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, Jim Wright, Tip O’Neill, and many more — who used every trick in the book to stop Reagan by denying authorities and funds to these efforts. On whom did we rely up on Capitol Hill? There were many stalwarts: Henry Hyde, elected in 1974; Dick Cheney, elected in 1978, the same year as Gingrich; Dan Burton and Connie Mack, elected in 1982; and Tom DeLay, elected in 1984, were among the leaders.
But not Newt Gingrich. He voted with the caucus, but his words should be remembered, for at the height of the bitter struggle with the Democratic leadership Gingrich chose to attack . . . Reagan.
The best examples come from a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986. This was right in the middle of the fight over funding for the Nicaraguan contras; the money had been cut off by Congress in 1985, though Reagan got $100 million for this cause in 1986. Here is Gingrich: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.” Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.” But of course “the burden of this failure frankly must be placed first on President Reagan.” Our efforts against the Communists in the Third World were “pathetically incompetent,” so those anti-Communist members of Congress who questioned the $100 million Reagan sought for the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels “are fundamentally right.” Such was Gingrich’s faith in President Reagan that in 1985, he called Reagan’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”
Gingrich scorned Reagan’s speeches, which moved a party and then a nation, because “the president of the United States cannot discipline himself to use the correct language.” In Afghanistan, Reagan’s policy was marked by “impotence [and] incompetence.” Thus Gingrich concluded as he surveyed five years of Reagan in power that “we have been losing the struggle with the Soviet empire.” Reagan did not know what he was doing, and “it is precisely at the vision and strategy levels that the Soviet empire today is superior to the free world.”
There are two things to be said about these remarks. The first is that as a visionary, Gingrich does not have a very impressive record. The Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, just as Reagan had believed it must. The expansion of its empire had been thwarted. The policies Gingrich thought so weak and indeed “pathetic” worked, and Ronald Reagan turned out to be a far better student of history and politics than Gingrich.
The second point to make is that Gingrich made these assaults on the Reagan administration just as Democratic attacks were heating up unmercifully. Far from becoming a reliable voice for Reagan policy and the struggle against the Soviets, Gingrich took on Reagan and his administration.
via Gingrich and Reagan – Elliott Abrams – National Review Online.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
You gotta love, Newt. He was a neo-con before it was cool. With Gingrich in the Presidency there would be no end to going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
Reagan was much more liberal than most conservatives think. I’m thinking of his radical expansion of government spending, as well as his legalization of abortion while he was governor of California.
Newt is not only a demogogue, emotionally unstable, and a sociopath. He is also quite clearly devoid of any sense in international matters. I can only conclude that those whho support him must obviously either be uninformed, blind, devoid of good sense, or America-haters that want to usher in some calamitous event to bring that great country to its knees. No, I am not joking, not in the least.
Michael B.,
You’re quite right about Reagan, at least with respect to his second term. The point is that Newt governed to the left of Reagan, however. In other words, to paraphrase SKP, he was a RINO before RINOs were cool (or when they were still cool?).
I’m acquainted with a rather prominent Southern conservative–an original delegate for Barry Goldwater (yes, 1964)–who loathes Gingrich, regarding him as an opportunistic fraud, among other unmentionables. This gentleman apparently knew Newt before his foray into politics; allegedly, the only reason Newt chose to affiliate with the Republican party was because it offered the greatest opportunities for gaining power in the South at that time. Historical evidence seems to agree. Newt’s concern is Newt, and if popular opinion seemed to concur, his “Contract with America” could just as well have been a hyper-left socialist program for all he cared. Hence, we have Newt promising to disobey the Supreme Court to those concerned with judicial activism, eliminate taxes (especially capital gains taxes!) for those who hate taxes, and build moon bases to old Floridian NASA stalwarts. None of these proposals have any relation whatsoever to the current conditions of American political life, and none of them address real contemporary problems.
Of course, I think much the same is true of Romney, though the self-aggrandizement and demagoguery just aren’t as blatant in his case.
When Newt did that slimy ad with Nancy Pelosi in favor of fighting “global warming”, he showed himself to be the political opportunist that he is.
I don’t care for him very much.
But against Obama, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat.
Newt is a professional — that is he believes and does what he gets paid to believe and do. Who’s paying for him now? http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/who-is-sheldon-adelson-the-gingrich-super-pacs-billionaire-backer/252003/
O what fools these “social conservatives” be!
If elected Newt will leave for a younger, hotter country who has ignited his passions that he no longer has for the US.
If he wins the nomination, I may finally burn my party card. I won’t be voting for him. Of course, I will probably do the same if Mitt wins too.
I voted third-party last time …
It is telling that few who worked with Newt in the past will have anything to do with him now.
The latest Newt craze has died down again, the Romney has been re-established as the overwhelming favorite for the nomination. The latest polls show Newt behind Romney narrowly in Florida, and he is not on the ballot in several of the following states, because of his lack of organization and money.
It’s Romney who will face Obama in the fall, as I’ve been saying for a while.
BTW, ol’ Newt has just promised a lunar colony by 2020: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/to-the-moon-callista-newt-gingrich-promises-lunar-colony-by-2020/252025/
Much as this geek likes the idea, there is no way you can reduce the deficit (nevermind the debt) and do that, and wage all the wars he wants to wage, and not raise taxes and and and….
On the other hand, it must be nice to smoke what he is smoking.
Dr. Luther @ 7
“If elected Newt will leave for a younger, hotter country who has ignited his passions that he no longer has for the US.”
My favorite item of the day. So far.
I have to say, since I’m forced to vote not for the person who is most truthful but for the person who lies most skillfully, I can no longer see myself casting a vote for Newt.
Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic:
From here: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/to-the-moon-callista-newt-gingrich-promises-lunar-colony-by-2020/252025/
As to Abrams’ article, I find it (unintentionally) humorous. You can practically hear him swooning as he exclaims, “Why, the man criticized Reagan! Ronald ‘Republican’ Reagan! Where’s my fainting couch?” I mean, you just can’t do that!
Reagan! Chant the name and angels sing! Reagan! Whose gilded tongue “moved a party and then a nation”! Reagan! Who graced our nation for oh! too short a time before his apotheosis, his joining the celestial pantheon to continue to fight on behalf of this nation!
Anyhow, how dare Gingrich have criticized Reagan’s Afghanistan policy! It was pristine! Flawless! Engraved on golden plates and handed directly to Reagan! It’s not like we ever experienced any subsequent complications from this policy, so obviously Gingrich was dead wrong to criticize Reagan. Heck, to even utter his most-hallowed name.
Anyhow, Newt’s a loon, but I kinda want him to get the nomination, anyhow. First, because in his more lucid moments, he might actually force Obama to respond and defend his administration’s past and future goals.
But, too, there’s the pure entertainment value of a Gingrich-v.-Obama fight. Whereas watching Obama debate Romney will be like watching a debate about which is the best cheese in the world, as presented by the CEOs of Velveeta and Kraft.
@15
I happily voted for Reagan and wouldn’t have left the GOP in the Bush II years if the party hadn’t abandoned his views on taxes (millionaires should pay more than bus drivers) and immigration (’86 amnesty). Today it’s a religio– er, party that Goldwater, with his libertarian attitude toward gays and birth control, wouldn’t be welcome in. But perhaps Newt will get the nomination, causing the party to splatter, and it will come to its senses and reform into something more tolerant. We can only hope.
Bob Dole is warning the Repubs. to stay away from the dark side, and not nominate Newtonian.
I’ve always admired Bob Dole — a good man, and someone who was/is a normal Republican (if there are any left), unlike Newtie and the other boneheads active in the party today. I say, go ahead, conservs — elect Newtie. It’ll be more of a landslide for Obama than LBJ in 1964, I promise you.
“Bob Dole says Newt Gingrich nomination will have ‘adverse effect’ on GOP”
Dole: “Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall. He loved picking a fight with Bill Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press. This and a myriad of other specifics helped to topple Gingrich in 1998.”
“If Gingrich is the nominee, it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices,” Bob Dole wrote. “Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him, and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.”
Dole said that “if we want to avoid an Obama landslide in November, Republicans should nominate Governor Romney as our standard-bearer.”
http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2012/01/bob-dole-says-newt-gingrich-nomination-will-have-adverse-effect-gop/uzoNZSfulwYg2Q74DulspK/index.html
I don’t remember which rightie it was on here who once accused me of using tactics from Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals” — though I’d never read a word of the guy’s stuff — and I almost spit my coffee out my nose with laughter.
Hey, turns out I’m not the one you should be worried about, but it’s Newtie Gingrich.
“On NBC’s “Meet the Press” this past Sunday, Gingrich attributed his South Carolina victory to two things. The first was the economic pain that people were feeling. He then continued, “The second, though, which I think nobody in Washington and New York gets, is the level of anger at the national establishment.”
Gingrich’s clashes against the establishment are classic Alinsky.
“The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a ‘dangerous enemy,’” Alinsky wrote in “Rules for Radicals.”
He went on to reveal that, “Today, my notoriety and the hysterical instant reaction of the establishment not only validate my credentials of competency but also ensure automatic popular invitation.”
“Newtie Gingrich is a Saul Alinsky Republican”
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/newt-gingrich-saul-alinsky-republican/338701
Also, remember Gingrich’s grand grandstanding moment in that one debate, where he told CNN’s John King that he offered up several witnesses to ABC in his defense, but ABC wouldn’t interview any of them because of their anti-Republican vendetta?
Yeah, Gingrich’s campaign now admits he was wrong about that. Whoops.
WSJ, 20 minutes ago:
While all this talk of Newt is interesting/depressing, I still highly doubt he’ll earn the nomination. Romney is The Anointed One.
The Republicans have found their Clinton. If Newt wins Florida he can start dating again.
Really? – who “anointed” this man, it cannot have been the LORD. So who was it?
ANOINTED as in the definition — “to choose by or as if by divine intervention.“
Who divinely intervened to “anoint” Romney a cultist, to be a nominee?
I see how carelessly the term “ANOINTED” is used. What sort of denomination would “ANOINT” a cultist as a nominee for president of the United States?
Is that your wish? – so you have something to post on the blogs? What on earth will you do, when your IDEA falls flat on its botox?
Grace (@24), thanks for explaining to everyone what “anointed” means in the strict literal sense. You’re probably the only one here who knew that definition, so it’s really helpful to the rest of here who were struggling so hard to make sense of Cincinnatus’ comment (@22), wondering if he might be speaking sarcastically or euphemistically.
I agree Todd, it is really helpful to have our own Master (Mistress?) Philologist here. For many years we floundered in the sea of words, but now we have Grace.
All hail to the new female incarnation of Hermes! May her annointing by Zeus last a thousand years! Hail! Hail!
In his American Spectator column, “Elliott Abrams Caught Misleading on Newt,” Jeffrey Lord writes: