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Jewish World Review
Nov 16, 2011
19 Mar-Cheshvan, 5772
Why Newt Gingrich won't last
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I’m afraid I can’t get too excited about the Newt Gingrich boomlet.
The field general of the Revolution of 1994 is suddenly out in front of the Republican presidential primary polls, but I can’t help thinking that he will soon go the way of Rick Perry and Herman Cain. It’s not Gingrich’s disparaging of President Obama’s “Kenyan, neo-colonial” worldview. Or the six-figure bills he and his third wife ran up at Tiffany’s. Or the cruise of the Greek islands that led much of his staff to quit in frustration. Gaffes and missteps may dislodge Perry and Cain from their top-tier status by making them appear unqualified to be president, but there’s no question the former speaker of the House is qualified. His problem, rather, is that he is entirely too moderate in this field — and, therefore, in no position to establish himself as the conservative anti-Mitt Romney. The ideas that made him a conservative revolutionary in 1994 make him squishy in 2012. The public got a taste of Gingrich’s relative moderation in May, when he disparaged Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which House Republicans embraced en masse, as “right-wing social engineering” and “too big a jump.” He quickly retreated from this inadvertent honesty, uttered in the same “Meet the Press” interview when he defended his previous support for an “individual mandate” requiring health insurance — the part of Obamacare that conservatives find most objectionable. This was not an isolated case. In 2005, he sat down with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to make common cause over health care. He said he and Clinton “have the same instinct” on health care and praised the notion of a health-care “transfer of finances” from rich to poor. “I risk sounding not quite as right wing as I should,” Gingrich said at the time. “I’ve spent enough of my life fighting,” he added. In 2007, Gingrich appeared with John Kerry and conceded that humans have contributed to global warming, saying, “We should address it very actively.” He complained about “the absence of American leadership” on climate change, pitched incentives to reduce carbon emissions and said: “I am not automatically saying that coercion and bureaucracy is not an answer.” Gingrich called for a “green conservatism.” In 2009, Gingrich met in the Oval Office with President Obama and the Rev. Al Sharpton and emerged to proclaim that “education should be the first civil right of the 21st century.” Soon after that, he appeared on Capitol Hill with Bill Clinton and Trent Lott for an unveiling of the former Senate majority leader’s portrait, lamenting that “we wasted so much energy with controversy when we could get so many more things done.”
At one point during his dalliance with the Democratic establishment, Gingrich joked that “one can gradually rebuild almost any reputation if you pander enough to the authorities that write columns and show up on TV.” Now Gingrich is trying to undo all that pandering, and his strategy of bickering with the debate moderators has won him adoration among conservatives. “I am just so mad about . . . nasty, petty questions,” radio host Bill Bennett told Gingrich Tuesday morning, saying of one moderator: “You took him down.” “I don’t mind taking them on,” Gingrich said. That tactic has helped to save Gingrich from obscurity in the presidential field. While Perry and Cain have flamed out, Gingrich remains the last man standing against Romney, virtually tied with him nationally in a new CNN poll. Gingrich is now aiming to take his anti-media campaign further. The news media “did everything they could to kill my campaign,” he said, and “I fully expect them to dig up everything they can, throw the kitchen sink at me and see if they can stop me.” This, he told WBOB radio in Jacksonville, Fla., on Tuesday afternoon, is because his candidacy is “probably the greatest threat” to Obama’s reelection. Actually, there’s less media antagonism toward Gingrich than to other candidates. And few in the Washington establishment would regard Gingrich as a threat to the status quo in the capital. The real danger to his candidacy is that Tea Party voters will discover just how moderate he has been. This slipped out in his interview with WBOB, when he criticized the budget-cutting “supercommittee” in terms similar to those he used to condemn the Ryan budget plan. “If you’re going to have very large-scale change, whether to Social Security or Medicare,” he said, “the American people have to have a chance to decide how they are going to solve it.” What? Consensus-based leadership? Sounds squishy. The conservative voters Gingrich needs will never go for it.
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Previously:
• 11/08/11 The 2012 campaign gets seedier
• 11/06/11 A Machiavellian model for Obama
• 11/03/11 The Herman Cain crack-up
• 11/01/11 Cain can --- he will survive
• 10/27/11 Stuntmen of the supercommittee
• 10/26/11 Democrats on the sidelines
• 10/24/11 Rick Perry's birther Parade
• 10/24/11 The birthers eat their own
• 10/19/11 The GOP's middle man
• 10/17/11 The waiting for nothing Congress
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
• 10/05/11 Obama and his foot soldiers go toe to toe
• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
• 09/26/11 Republicans? Mr. Nice Guys?
• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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