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 For many years, I admired the mind of Newt Gingrich. In the 1980s and '90s, nobody, with the exception of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley, articulated political conservatism with the effectiveness of Gingrich.
When Gingrich led the midterm Republican revolution in 1994, many of us were hopeful that the nation had suddenly realized that two years of lower-lip biting and 40 years of Democrat majority in the House and Senate were big mistakes.
Inevitably though, the luster of the Republican revolution slowly started to fade. The first thing you learn as a young voter is that politicians are not unlike some exercise equipment you see for sale on television: it always works better on TV, and the fat it promised to trim never comes to fruition. But I figured Newt's "revolution" was at least a good start.
As a political philosopher and historian, I have consistently
considered Gingrich to be an upper-echelon conservative – but fairly
recently, something has happened to Newt. For one, he's jumped aboard
the "climate-change" train while claiming it's only so he can make sure
the gauges aren't broken.
My Gingrich wince started last spring
during a global warming "debate" between Newt and John Kerry that CNN
dubbed "Shoot-out at the climate change corral" – prompting Kerry to
lobby for another Purple Heart.
In that "debate," Kerry took up
the position that climate change was real and that something needs to
be done, while Gingrich insisted that climate change could be real, and
we should do something about it just in case it is. It was like
watching a doubles match at Wimbledon with two players on one side of
the court, and none on the other – all while a dog was off to the side
chasing its own tail.
Even still, this alone wasn't enough to knock me off Newt's fan list. But it was going to get worse.
Last
weekend I saw an ad that must have been produced under the working
title, "How to get conservatives to hate Newt Gingrich in 30 easy
seconds."
Gingrich joined forces with Nancy Pelosi in urging Americans to sign on to WeCanSolveIt.org and help fight climate change.
After
seeing the Pelosi/Gingrich ad, I was a bit stunned. I felt like Michael
Corleone watching Fredo chatting it up with Hyman Roth. I'd just like
to tell Newt, "You broke my heart ..."
The ad is sponsored by the
Alliance for Climate Protection, a group founded, naturally, by Al
Gore. Whenever I hear the word "alliance" used in a political context,
especially with Gore's name attached, I'm reminded of Ambrose Bierce's
definition of the word that I ran across recently:
al•li•ance (ə lī-əns) n. In international politics, the
union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each
other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third
The likes of Pelosi, Gore and now apparently Gingrich are devoting
themselves to discrediting Bierce's definition by attempting to grow a
third arm and hand.
On Gingrich's website, Newt amended his participation in the climate
change ad with this explanation: "I don't think we have conclusive
proof of global warming. And I don't think we have conclusive proof
that humans are at the center of it."
Newt says it's important for conservatives to engage in the debate,
and that's true. But what conservative works to apply solutions to
problems they don't even know exist? This is the kind of bureaucratic
"overpriced cart before the phantom horse" approach that people like
Gingrich were originally sent to DC to fight against.
Will Pelosi reciprocate by, say, working to get taxes lowered just
in case it's true that high taxes harm the economy? Of course not.
Republican politicians, past and present, have earned the nickname
"Tootsie Pop spelunkers" because they're the party of suckers who cave
easily, and Newt's not helping change that reputation.
Gingrich is being duped, and I thought he was smarter than this.
Perhaps the years and years of being bashed, vilified, knocked and
kicked around has led to a case of Stockholm Syndrome so severe that
Newt's actually started to sprout skis – which will come in handy when
he's vacationing in the mountains of Idaho with the Kerrys.
The Republican revolution of '94 now seems like it was so long ago
that it never happened, doesn't it? Did it ever really happen at all?
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