The Newt Gingrich Effect ... by gimleteye

The sad parade of the GOP towards nomination of a presidential candidate will be a spectacle for future students of political and cultural history. Newt Gingrich is a sometimes professor who never lacks for an interpretation. There is more irony in Gingrich's fifteen minutes of fame. The former House Speaker derives from the line of slash-and-burn GOP operatives; stretching from the young Roy Cohn, Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater, and its contemporary version, Karl Rove. Rove, Bush consigliere, is hovering in the background through SuperPAC's priming to unleash a tsunami of corporate campaign cash that will dwarf whatever the Democrats can summon for 2012.

Gingrich is the anti-Bush. The tension between Jeb and Gingrich, as party thinkers, is palpable whenever the two appear on the same stage. Rove has recently appeared on the GOP radar, pointing out Gingrich's shortcomings. Talk about cold wars.

For outsiders who yearn for a moderate and competitive GOP, there has been plenty of gnashing of teeth about the Grover Norquist effect and anti-tax pledges by GOP members of Congress; pushing Republicans into an extremist corner from which none have the courage to emerge. Gingrich played his role in pushing the party rightward.

Democrats remember Gingrich for engineering the 1994 mid-term election coup that delivered Congress to Republicans. But Republicans recall Gingrich for his arrogance and conviction that no one-- no one-- was smarter. (Although standing by Donald Trump as a form of reinforcement doesn't look to me like the smartest move.)

It would be a remarkable turn of the political screw if the Bush strain of the GOP had to support either Romney or Gingrich. Who is the bigger nightmare? Gingrich.