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Emperor Newt (yes, it does exist!)
With the Republican Counterrevolution even more lukewarm about its presidential prospects than the Democrats, it seems apparent that none of the current candidates is satisfactory for at least one element of the GOP coalition–fundamentalist Christians. The New York Times characterized the situation:
A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.
However, there is one candidate waiting in the wings as the other GOP candidates skewer each other or just stumble around: his name Newt Gingrich.
Don’t count Newt out, in fact I will make a prediction and say that if another alternative to the present bunch does not emerge soon, Gingrich will throw his hat in the ring. On his web page NEWT.ORG (Note the caps) he has said he will wait to make a decision until October, however a March 29th Richmond Times-Dispatch article by Tyler Whitley, had the subhead, “At Hanover event, former House speaker sounds like candidate.” It states:
If there is a need for someone to champion the solutions that his political committee, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is proposing, he probably will run.
If he does decide to run, Gingrich will be a formidable candidate for there is no doubt about his debating abilities or his cleverness at putting together formidable political packages. Certainly, he sees himself as one of the key intellectual architects of the GOP Counterrevolution. The prospect of a Newt-Hillary contest already has the press salivating.
I have always been surprised that in all the prose that has been expended on Newt that no one thought to compare him to his namesake, a slimy little reptile that in its juvenile stage lives under rocks and leaves in the damp and decaying under story of the forest and as an adult lives in swamps and ditches (for those who might be interested, the scientific name for common newt of Europe is turturus vulgaris). The mouth too small for the rotund face is the main give-away, for it is always in motion, as if by doing so it could make up for its diminution, as if it were always looking for something to nibble on, for Newt is above all a nibbler, constantly taking tiny bites to reduce his prey down to manageable size.
And make no doubt about it, Newt has been nibbling. He took former Tom DeLay’s criticisms of Gingrich’s tenure as speaker and turned them upside down, listing his accomplishments and then comparing them to Delay’s. He did not sound like a man who is backing away from a fight for the White House.
What he was referring to, of course, was the vehicle which made the 1994 Republican Congressional takeover possible–a Gingrich creation, reflecting his sense of self-importance and his belief that his sparse head of hair actually should sport a wig like those worn by George Washington or James Madison. As befitting a political philosopher with large ambitions, Newt and his allies titled this manifesto “The Contract With America.”
What hurt the old Newt and drove him from to resign the speakership in 1998 and announce he would not run for reelection was a rather large ego that often goes along with thinking in terms of big ideas. In the 1990s the Counterrevolution became so identified with him that it was difficult to tell the two apart. There was a certain, I want it too bad, presidential gleam in Newt’s eye that hauntingly resembles that of Henry Clay, whose American System was one of the key bulwarks of the pre-Civil War era.
At that time, Newt possessed none of Clay’s charm nor his legislative adroitness. In the tangled underbrush of his reasoning he and the movement became so inseparable that the personal and the political confusion became so entangled even he could not tell them apart. It was a fatal mistake. The Democrats ran the 1998 campaign against Newt, demonizing him so that the party of FDR had America believing that by eliminating Newt, they just might eliminate the Era of Bad Feelings Newt had helped to create. As 2000 proved, they were wrong.
It has been almost a decade since Newt crash-landed, but now even liberal papers are calling him “phoenix-like” in his rise back from the political morgue to where he currently ranks number four among GOP candidates, even though he has yet to declare. The comparisons with Richard Nixon are inevitable, for like Nixon, Gingrich has remade himself by talking to any group that will listen, by raising money for GOP causes and by working himself back onto the radio and television talk shows as a spokesperson for the Counterrevolution.
Last year the “new Newt” published two books with “presidential candidate” all but stamped on the dust jacket. The first, Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, capitalizes on his past success and emphasizes his “new” solutions. The second, Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation’s History and Future is a brilliant move to capture those folks who left that Florida meeting without a candidate.
The second book all but signals Gingrich’s intentions. In contrast to his successor, Tom DeLay, or George W. Bush, Gingrich did not used to wear his religion like a somberly painted sandwich board. In the past, Newt tended to treat the third member of the Counterrevolutionary Coalition much the way some Democrats treated organized labor: not as a cause to be embraced, but as another interest group to be mollified. And then there was the matter of Newtie’s messy divorce and his rumored dalliances with female staffers.
His book attempts to mend those wounds. Whether his overtures to the Jerry Falwell wing of his party will be accepted, may be the key question of the next few months. But next to Sam Brownback, who so far has not managed to attract much attention or enthusiasm, he may be their best alternative.
A hint, watch how the mess over DeLay’s book plays out. If, as some are already saying, it gets characterized as “sour grapes” or DeLay and Gingrich mend fences watch out for Newt. One way or the other, he will be there nibbling away.
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