[May 18, 2004 evote.com]  At what first appeared to be a routine press conference back in 1995, Newt Gingrich opened his mouth and dropped a bomb on the House. He had asked Price Waterhouse to audit the congressional books. And the prestigious international accounting firm had come back with the conclusion that the financial records of the Congress of the United States of America were so bad that they were “unauditable”.

But Gingrich, who originated the audit in an attempt to bring discipline and accountability to Congress, would be the ultimate victim of this tempest in a teapot. And in this incident, as in many others, Gingrich displayed the power of his incredibly brilliant mind and tenacious political skills butting against his almost Shakespearean talent for self-destruction.

Now, five years after Gingrich exited the House, the GOP faces a crossroads -- continue down a path that will lead them squarely away from the Gingrich revolution of the 1990s, or turn back to Gingrich's message of smaller-is-better government.

The GOP's choices – and their perception by the voting public -- will have profound effects on Election 2004 -- and will determine if the GOP continues to control the House, and preserves gains in the Senate. And it may even decide whether George W. Bush follows his father onto the lists of one-term presidents.

From Political God to Goon, Courtesy of Scandals and Democrats
Gingrich was at the forefront of the ‘smaller government, less spending’ movement in 1996, but had some trouble getting his issues across to voters. It didn’t help that the former professor’s speaking style featured ideologically loaded lectures, hard to package for news. Aides and spinners worked overtime trying to condense Gingrichese into soundbites, but all it took was a smooth Clinton response to turn the news tide against Gingrich.

Republicans in election 1996 followed the Gingrich mantra closely, but the man’s troubles (a Murdoch book scandal, the GOPAC scandal and multiple highly publicized extramarital affairs to name a few) began to drag him down. Gingrich’s Republican colleagues went from worshipful to wary.

Even long after Newt ‘retired’, Democrats kept at it. The DNC machine demonized Gingrich the man anytime a Republican dared mention an unattributed Gingrich ideal. It worked. During election 2000, the specter of Gingrich would even be used by Bill Bradley to attack fellow democrat, Al Gore.

In 2004, the ‘smaller government’ message previously espoused by Gingrich is now utterly gone, the GOP having been cowed by a highly effective Democratic smear campaign. The ghost of Gingrich still haunts Republican efforts at issue discussion. And the GOP would dearly love to engage in issue discussion as Iraq turns sour for Bush.

Big Government is Back
Big government is back with a vengeance, even among Republicans who used to spout small government rhetoric.

After the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994 they supported reducing wasteful spending and eliminating the deficit. And for several years they pursued a policy of balancing the budget and curtailing spending somewhat.

The deluge of 1990s technology tax money and the balanced budget of the late 1990s created a spendthrift mindset among most congressmen, including Republicans. The bounty spurred a high rate of spending that continues today and is a significant reason for America’s return to massive budget deficits.

Even though the Republicans now control both houses of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court, the government is growing like a sedentary kid hooked on chocolate. Not a single department, major agency or big government program has been dismantled. Indeed, they have added one; the Department of Homeland Security.

The Republicans are ironically to blame for today’s huge budget deficits, as they head the committees, mostly set the agenda and steer the American ship.

The Gingrich Anti-Washington Theme
Newt’s conservatism was anti-Washington. The thinking was that the federal government was unaware of the concerns of most Americans and that its chief product, big government, influenced their lives negatively. Gingrich saw Washington as not legitimate and its many years of corrupt arrogant one-party Democratic control and liberal policy to be important ingredients to conservative change.

This anti-Washington conservative flavor helped pass bills by uniting the conservatives. Whatever particular issue a conservative congressman deemed important, more government was not the solution and was probably adding to the problem. Those who supported big government were most likely Democrats, according to Gingrich.

That might have been true in the mid 1990’s, but today big government can be found in the White House.

Big Government, Bush Style
According to Bush’s fiscal year 2005 budget, total federal outlays will rise 29 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005. Real discretionary spending increases in 2002, 2003 and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. The U.S. Treasury recently announced the federal debt subject to congressional limits has for the first time surpassed $7 trillion. Estimates for the annual budget deficits for the next few years are between $15 and $70 billion.

Granted; defense spending has increased with the war on terror, but the “compassionate conservative” Bush has made little effort to restrain non-defense spending such as on education with the No Child Left Behind Act, an upwards of $400 billion Medicare bill (the largest new entitlement program in 40 years) and farm subsidies to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Non-defense discretionary outlays will increase about 36 percent during his first term.

When the GOP Lost Fiscal Restraint, It Lost the Edge That Won Them the House
Perhaps George Wallace, who ran as a third-party presidential candidate in 1968, was correct when he declared that “there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference” between the Democrats and Republicans. (A nickel might be more like it.)

And this Bush fiscal liberalism is a rejection of Gingrich’s policies.

“Right now Bush does not have as high a priority on fiscal restraint as Newt did back” when he was Speaker, says Blankley, the former Gingrich aid. “Newt is tougher than Bush” on fiscal restraint. “He slowed the increase in government spending.”

But Gingrich did indeed support last year’s Medicare bill from his Senior Fellow position at a Washington D.C. think tank called the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. It expands prescription drug benefits to seniors and is the biggest expansion of government health benefits since the 1960s Great Society. Blankley says Gingrich did so in part because of the bill’s market-based health care components.

Again, it is Gingrich and his ideology.

Republican Party Parties Hearty in the House with Increased Spending
David Boaz, Executive Vice President of Washington, D.C.’s Cato Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation, tells EVOTE.COM higher spending by Republicans today is a result of their electoral success in controlling congress and the presidency. “Partisan gridlock is the reason for the fiscal restraint under Clinton.”

Once the government was unified, according to Boaz, the Republicans “found it easier to spend money on government programs because they could agree on what to spend money on. More bills get passed and more programs appropriated because they are all in the same party. Bush has not vetoed a single bill which may be unprecedented.

The recent spending explosion under the unified Republican government is the fastest since (the time of 1960s Democratic President Lyndon Baines) Johnson. Now that we can look back, there would be less spending with Clinton and a Republican Congress that there is with Bush and a Republican Congress. Bush is a big government conservative. He is a fiscal liberal.”

“In a democracy, it is always attractive to hand out money,” says Boaz. “It is the way to get elected.”

And more spending and programs also increases power and control for the elected officials of all parties, an instinctual desire some elected officials cannot resist.

Newtopia: Gingrich Blazes Onto the Scene
In the 1990’s the time finally came for the self-privileged pols to beware because Newt had arrived with the determination of an Iberian war horse; a Pennsylvania-born man who spoke ideologically and with vision, raised by a career military father.

Gingrich became the first speaker in many years, perhaps the only speaker, to vehemently fight against the lethargy and status quo of so many of America’s Packard-driving politicians and wasteful government agencies.

The Republicans demolished several age-old congressional perks with glee, including the cashiering of congressional “doorkeepers” who had “earned” their “jobs” through patronage and also eliminated the oh-so-important ice buckets that appeared in front of each House office’s door every morning. How could they possibly make cuts such as these?

The cuts were spurred by Gingrich himself, who ran an anti-government campaign that appealed to many outside of Washington. And it didn't hurt that, after decades out of power, the GOP was finally able to take its revenge for all of the petty slights and cronyism that the Democrats had visited upon them. Payback was both sweet, politically popular, and a whole heck of a lot of fun.

The ‘Republican Revolution’ Begins an Era of Party Strength
As architect of the Contract With America, he launched a renaissance. Gingrich was the primary theorist, chief tactician and strategist, and primary mouthpiece of the activist Republican Party that manifested itself in 1994 as the “Republican Revolution.”

A new era of GOP strength began, a belief the Republican Party could run the country and not just brake the excesses of the Democrats, just as it had with Mark Hanna and the building of the post-1896 era of Republican majority.

Gingrich could not completely speed up the stagnant ways of the U.S. government to the level of the corporate world, which is probably impossible, but he could be the first politician in America’s history to accomplish so much in making government more responsive to contemporary needs.

The Audit from Hell: It’s a Newt Congress
After Gingrich first became speaker in 1995 at the age of 51 he did something no speaker, it is claimed, had ever done since the country’s founding--and no chief executive officer of any public company would ever consider not doing (it is the law)--he simply engaged an independent accounting firm to audit the $800 million annual budget of the House of Representatives. And man, what an audit it was!

For Price Waterhouse & Co., among the world’s preeminent firms at the time, it should have been a simple assignment: provide an audit as they have done for so many companies before. But this became the audit from hell, or so it was effectively stated in the July, 1995 press conference.

House Financials Shown to be FUBAR
The financial records of the United States House of Representatives were so screwed up, so incomplete, such a bloody corrupt mess that PW was forced to tell Gingrich that the House’s books were incapable of being audited. The PW report stated the House’s records were so unreliable that “an opinion of any sort" on its finances was impossible.

Price Waterhouse called Congress “one of the worst-run organizations ever reviewed in the history of the company.” It was said the ledger books had changed little from the days of the Continental Congress and there were no certified public accountants on the House staff.

Had Congress been a company, its CEO would have been burned alive. But conversely, years later, sanctimonious politicians of every political stripe boldly stepped out of their golf carts to loudly condemn the accounting scandals of Arthur Anderson, Enron and WorldCom, yet they themselves probably abused the public’s money for at least decades and are largely hypocritically taciturn about their own bookkeeping scandal.

It took The Passion of Gingrich to balance the House’s books.

A GOP Majority, Courtesy of The Contract With America
The Contract With America, a host of issues the Republicans promised to be voted on within the first 100 days of the new 1995 Congress in a vein similar to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first administration, included items Republicans never believed they could pass even during the Reagan years.

Indeed, it was Gingrich’s Contract With America in 1994 that led the GOP that fall to capturing the majority of the House for the first time in forty years, which they have yet to relinquish. The Republicans over the years had often won the presidency, but winning congressional seats was harder.

Issues So Popular, Everyone Wanted a Slice
Thirteen issues pushed for by Gingrich during this revolutionary period eventually became thirteen laws.

At the Democratic National Convention, Gingrich perhaps received his greatest political accolade when Democratic President Bill Clinton took credit for passing 13 Gingrich-supported bills during his 1996 Chicago acceptance speech.

And perhaps it was Gingrich and the Republicans who also forced Clinton into supporting welfare reform and the drive towards a balanced budget, two aspects of his presidency viewed favorably by many Americans.

The Difference in Hindsight
To understand just how much Gingrich accomplished, how different he was from the big-bellied, don’t-give-a-damn attitude of many elected officials, consider the Congressional Accountability Act passed by the House on the very first day Gingrich became Speaker on January 23, 1995.

The Congressional Accountability Act actually had the balls to require Congress to live under many of the same federal laws they impose on the private sector, such as those relating to employment discrimination, family and medical leave, fair labor standards, occupational safety and health and Americans with disabilities.

The ideologically-driven, workaholic Gingrich had done something previously unthinkable in gaining passage of the Magna Carta-esque bill. Many loved him for it, although just as many others found reasons to hate him.

Republicans Shift, Ignoring the Gingrich Earthquake Aftershocks
So what happened to the legacy of the polarizing figure of Newt Gingrich, this oracle of Georgia? The legacy and effect of this 1995 Time Magazine “Man of the Year,” who so greatly affected the government in the mid 1990s, is still significantly influencing government today.

But as Republican priorities have changed and as the country has been altered by terrorism and war, in some ways the country and his party have forgotten the ideas, vision and ideals that brought Gingrich to the fore of American political consciousness. Some say good riddance—but others seek a return to the Gingrich juggernaut.

The most prominent remaining effect of the Gingrich legacy is political, the winning of Republican congressional seats, Tony Blankley tells EVOTE.COM. Blankley is a former spokesman for the Speaker and is now the Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Times. At the political level, his legacy is huge.

“It was an earthquake. It changed the political dynamics of the country. It is a major hunk of political history. It is hard to imagine (George) Bush winning the 2000 election” without Gingrich, said Blankley.

Today, Republicans have a plurality of members in both houses of Congress too, giving them an advantage in passing bills. Most state governments are also Republican controlled. This electoral success gives the Republicans more control in setting the political agenda. “The American Association of Retired Persons is now doing business with the Republicans,” says Blankley.

Gingrich Had Made Enemies of Powerful Figures
Gingrich’s political effect goes beyond Republican electoral success because he revamped the House’s committee structure. He got rid of many of the old bulls who chaired the committees, which in turn made some of them angry with Gingrich, says Blankley. “They had their power taken away. He was stepping on toes.”

David W. Brady, a political scientist at Stanford University, has said that by limiting the speaker and committee chairmen to six-year terms and cutting committee staff by one-third, the GOP significantly opened up a House that had long been dominated by a handful of powerful lawmakers.

"It made the House more democratic, less hierarchical and less dominated by the old bulls," said Brady, who also teaches at Stanford's business school. "It would be hard, if Democrats came back in, to go back to the old seniority system."

The World According to Gingrich Brought Bounty and Blame
It was not only Gingrich’s political career that perhaps came to a sudden end after the surprising congressional losses in the November 1998 elections, when he left Congress and the speakership. It was a theory of history, too.

It could be called the world according to Gingrich, as he was its primary proponent, teacher and public persona. But it was not his theory of history in particular. The theory belonged primarily to his abundance of supporters, and not just Republicans inside the beltway but everyone who savored the election results four years before. His and their doctrine was that of progressive Republicanism, a new driving ideological agenda.

Speaker Gingrich personified this doctrine of Republican progress which was populist, conservative, ideological, and triumphalist in character.

Granted, by 1998 when his political career ended many of his supporters had turned on him because of the 1996 government shutdown, the viciously successful Democratic attacks and blame for that years’ disappointing congressional elections, among other reasons. Newt had been tied to the whipping post and accused of every evil proposal one could imagine. Some Republicans actually shied away from the words, “Republican Revolution.”

Democrats Begin the Deconstruction of Newt
During the 1996 presidential campaign between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton, the Democrats ran thousands of ads that Gingrich said were “factually false.” The ads said that if Dole was elected and Gingrich ran congress, then Medicare, education, and student loans would be slashed and interest rates will soar. This was the era of ‘wither on the vine’.

It was a blatant lie, Republicans said, and attempt to scare elderly voters about Medicare – and ultimately, a very successful spin for Democrats. Gingrich never actually wanted to cut Medicare or student loans. The GOP simply wanted to reduce the rate of their increase in spending.

That means the money spent on the programs in question would continue to increase. And Gingrich does not set interest rates, something done mostly by private-sector banks and the Federal Reserve Bank which operates with little, if any, influence by Congress.

Media handling can be crucial for electoral success. Make the other guy or party seem bad has been an effective American campaign strategy since the country’s founding. And the Democrats did it right with Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich Demonization a Handy Tool for Democrats
Hillary Clinton discovered that an effective tool to smash her Republican senatorial opponent, New York Congressman Rick Lazio, was to refer to his links with the former Speaker. "He goes around calling himself mainstream,” she reportedly said. “I guess his service as a deputy whip to Newt Gingrich is considered mainstream."

Al Gore found some Gingrich fodder in election 2000 when he said Bush supported the "the Newt Gingrich plan that former Speaker Gingrich said would cause Medicare to wither on the vine,” Continuing this effective line of attack, Gore noted that he “fought against that plan even when Newt Gingrich shut the government down twice.''

Even Bill Bradley used Gingrich against Gore in the election 2000 cycle. Bradley recalled Clinton's 1995 handshake in New Hampshire with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, suggesting the Contract with America was really a silent agreement between Clinton/Gore and Gingrich to ensure the status quo.

"Behind every public handshake on this issue, there has always been a secret handshake ... an agreement among politicians not to upset a system that they use to their advantage," Bradley said.

Even in Election 2004, Gingrich is a Dirty Word
Presidential candidate Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO), a decade since the Republican revolution, also threw a bit of Gingrich into the fire. In attacking Howard Dean last September, at the time his leading rival, Gephardt said the former Governor Dean sided with Gingrich to scale back and change the Medicare program in the mid-1990s.

Not to be unrivaled by his rival in attacking Gingrich, Dean retorted, according to published reports, “It is a sad day for Dick Gephardt when he compares any Democratic candidate running for President to Newt Gingrich and his divisive policies. No Democrat in the presidential race bears any resemblance to Newt Gingrich on any major issue. And for Dick Gephardt to suggest otherwise is simply beyond the pale.”

Yet Gingrich Still Supports Republicans and the Diminished Message
Despite Bush’s fiscal liberalism, Gingrich is still of course a strong supporter of the Republicans winning the presidency. Speaking before the Republican National Committee last October (before Kerry became the presumed nominee), Gingrich said the election will be much bigger than a choice of personalities.

In his eyes, the 2004 election will be a clear choice between two distinct futures for America. These two futures are a reflection of very different philosophies, values, and interest, including:

•Economic policy, which for the GOP includes cutting taxes and encouraging private investing.
• The Republicans are more inclined than the Democrats to create incentives and opportunities for personal savings accounts for Social Security and personal long term care insurance.
•To avoid Democratic efforts for “America to slide into a centrally controlled, bureaucratic system of government-run healthcare with diminished innovations.”

[John Pike is a veteran freelance journalist based in Boston. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers and wire services, including the Boston Globe, Reason and Insight Magazines. He has seen the Republican agenda change so many times he no longer has any idea what they stand for and is seeking psychiatric help for his confusion. ]

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[May 18, 2004 evote.com]  The modern Gingrich ideological conservatism was different from what was called conservative in years past. Gingrich believed in action and pictured a better future through conservative reform and technological progress.

Gingrich felt that society must adapt to new conditions that continually arise and not resist novel, unsettling situations. This explains in part his support of free trade, which he believes Americans must embrace and not fight against as unions are doing.

Gingrich loves the new economic order. He believes an important issue in politics is not to take the rough edges off the new economy or to make sure its effects will only be felt slowly, but to force the United States as quickly as possible into the new age.

Ushering In Change Despite the Naysayers
According to Gingrich, free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade only accelerate the economic transformation which he wants to happen. He believes that the more America is involved in a global market, the harder it is for “reactionary liberals” to resist the imperatives of change and competition.

Most economic scholars see free trade as benefiting all countries, as it is not a zero-sum game. It is the opposite view of Republican Patrick Buchanan who preaches economic nationalism and protective tariffs.

Gingrich often speaks and writes with disdain for those who warn of the perils and problems of change. In his book, Window of Opportunity, he writes about how “advanced health care,” information technology, satellites, space exploration, microelectronics, biotechnology and advances in telecommunications will improve the world. He loves the future and seeks to speed up the inevitable improvements.

Bush Resists Change Where Gingrich Had Embraced It
"Rather than whining that change is frightening (which it is), that change often disassociates us from our roots (which it does), and that change sometimes has undesirable side effects (which is true)," Gingrich wrote, "our grandchildren will accept these caveats as facts of life." He adds: "They will ask their culture to teach them how to rise above these difficulties rather than hide from them."

Gingrich believes the government should “accelerate the transition” to the future and spur the country as quickly as possible into the “third wave” of history, in a similar way his intellectual heroes see it, Alvin and Heidi Toffler. In a foreword to a book written by the couple, "Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave,” Gingrich emphasizes his impatience with “columnists and academics” who “all seem confused by the scale of change.”

Gingrich once said of the media; If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as "candle making industry threatened,” instead of how light bulbs would greatly improve humanity.

Bush in this regard is different from Gingrich. Bush is less determined than Gingrich to embrace economic change or see competition as beneficial. Bush kowtowed to the steel industry with high import tariffs until foreign countries threatened the United States with retaliatory duties. And of course the electoral success of the steel states in the next election also was in Bush’s mind. We also know that Bush has made stem-cell research difficult, appealing to the militant Protestant sects that may vote his way.

‘Privatization Does It Better’ Another Message Lost
So although Gingrich did see the government as creating problems, he did not believe the problem was federal power as such. The key was to change those wielding federal power, get the bureaucrats out of the way, and then conservative reform could be reaped. He sees a country where government would recede and private institutions would bear the burdens of moral uplift and philanthropy.

Gingrich is a strong believer in volunteering, as he sometimes helps builds homes for Habitat for Humanity. When he wanted to eliminate the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it was not because he did not enjoy the shows or regard them as important and educational, it was in part because of an ideological belief that private enterprise could also do it, perhaps better, especially if they were free from burdensome taxes.

It was also his belief in capitalistic efficiency that led Gingrich to support the Freedom to Farm Act, which passed in 1996 and was supposed to significantly reduce farm subsidies by injecting the free market into the nation's agriculture system. Many say the act backfired as subsidies increased. The law since then has been changed, so this part of Gingrich’s legacy has been blown to pieces.

Lack of Communication Skills Help Doom Newt to Failure
Gingrich’s inability to package his deeply layered reasoning into easily digestible television soundbites eventually alienated his message in the mind of the American public.

Gingrich’s ideology and vision is a result of his belief that all things are connected. Gingrich sees history in sweeping terms and everything is in patterns and themes, such as the growth of the welfare state, its progressive corruption, and then the people’s disgust of it.

In Gingrich’s view, for example, a notorious suburban Chicago murder was a product of the welfare state along the lines of the writings of Marvin Olasky. This correlation, misunderstood by so many without Gingrich’s longer view of history, may have contributed to his unpopularity.

Blaming a murder on welfare to many seemed utterly strange, as people usually hold individuals, not abstractions, responsible for such evil acts. Many of his statements were intentionally misunderstood by his detractors while others really had no idea what he stood for in this instant-news age.

“Some of his policies required a lot of explanation,” which is hard on television news, Blankley tells EVOTE.COM. Gingrich at one point proposed limiting the growth of hot lunches by 4.5 percent, but the Democrats convinced the American public he was trying to cut hot lunches. “You cannot have a policy debate on the news,” added Blankley, “You cannot communicate in the long form.”

Gingrich, Frustrated with the Media
"People are not, in general, stupid," wrote Newt Gingrich in 1984, "but they are often ignorant. In their ignorance, they often tolerate ignorant news reporters who in turn tolerate ignorant politicians. The result is an ignorant politician making an ignorant speech to be covered by an ignorant reporter and shown in a 40-second clip on television to an ignorant audience."

But of course many who disagreed with him were erudite and intelligent. And to many Democrats who misunderstood him, Gingrich became the poster child of Republican extremism, a product of tens of millions of dollars of union and Democratic advertising and propaganda. The Democrats picked on Gingrich because they needed someone to personify the evil Republicans so as to push their own agenda. But in reality Gingrich was never among the most conservative of right-wingers.

It was easy for Democrats to pick single phrases (‘wither on the vine’) out of gigantic Gingrich’s Rube Goldberg speeches and press releases for the evening news.

“The more that people were exposed to Newt, the more favorable they thought of him,” says Blankley. “People had limited exposure. If they saw a speech of Gingrich’s, they thought he was persuasive and they liked him. The shorter the period (television sound bites) the worse he did. The closer you got to Gingrich, the more impressive he was and the more you liked him.

“But nationally he was terrible,” Blankly explained, because television news “cannot communicate in the long form. He was not always an appealing character on the news. If there was one minute of shouting in a speech the media would cover that” and ignore the 45 minutes of Gingrich being calm. “They saw Newt at his angriest. He could be very combative.”

“And he had that wild hair,” says Blankley.

Often Gingrich would only get a haircut if his aids insisted he needed one. To his peril, Gingrich ignored the television age reality that poor helmet maintenance means a bad image on the news.

Why Did He Appeal? The Time Was Right.
The populist Republicanism espoused by Gingrich is not only due to voracious reading and creativity, but also a result of the rising percentage of Americans providing conservative answers to pollsters, probably increasing since the time when Republican Barry Goldwater took control of the party from its Northeast wing during the presidential primaries in 1964.

To tap into America’s shifting to the right the Republicans loudly identified themselves as the conservative party. Later on Republican President Richard Nixon recognized the existence of a “silent majority” opposed to the radicalism of the 1960s. The constituency of Republican President Ronald Reagan became resolutely anti-liberal, not just anti-extremist.

Gingrich saw active voters as being largely intelligent people, although at times the American people could be ignorant or uninformed. He figured that once America knew which party was pushing the people’s view, they would then vote Republican. Gingrich’s populist outlook and modern Republicanism were identical.

Gingrich Paints Democrats as Elitist
The Speaker believed Democrats were elitists and did not understand what Americans wanted. According to Gingrich, the Democrats wanted to maintain the status quo for themselves and their buddies through the power of government.

Since America is a democracy, a party’s ideology must be populist to succeed. If it is not populist, then the party to win elections must depend on successfully and continually misinforming the voters with false promises, and according to Gingrich, that is what the liberals had been doing. So he set out to give the people the government they wanted.

GOP Has Lost the ‘Honesty’ Edge
What is striking about the Contract With America is its honesty. The idea was that politicians would do what they promised and mean what they said. Gingrich spoke openly about a host of subjects, such as his desire to kill off the Health Care Finance Administration or his pro-Taiwan perspective.

He was also openly willing to shut down the government and set budgetary debt limits, too. This honesty and openness was often used against him by his Democratic opponents, sometimes out of context, but Gingrich was confident he was speaking on behalf of the voters.

And in 2004 have the Republicans lost this honesty? With all of Bush’s bluster about the weapons of mass destruction, the voters may end up seeing it as his electoral weapons of mass deception.

Sometimes it seems Bush and the Republicans go out of their way to allow Americans to believe things that are not true. Now of course Gingrich at the very least spoke obscurely at times, but he does appear to be more honest and direct than many politicians today. And everyone knows what honesty 'll get ya in politics…

Successful Dem Spinning Finally Slows the Newt Comet
The end of the Republican Revolution could be dated to Gingrich’s failed government shutdown during the winter of 1996, as the public mostly perceived Clinton as the victor of GOP efforts to reduce welfare, lessen entitlement programs, balance the budget and truncate taxes. With Clinton now appearing to play the middle between two extremes, Gingrich began to modify his Republicanism in response to unexpected political realities, but the fundamentals stayed on course.

Gingrich blamed his setbacks on the media, a failure to communicate effectively with the people, as so many politicians of all kinds do when their efforts are stymied. But there were also complaints from within the GOP, such as New York Sen. Al D’Amato saying some Gingrich proposals were too extreme. Many Republicans throughout the country abandoned their close association with Newt which continues today.

Publicly Embarrassed, Republicans Create Distance
William Weld was a relatively popular 1990s moderate Republican Massachusetts Governor with a Libertarian streak who at one time often had glowing praise of Newt Gingrich. He called him his “ideological soul mate.”

But in June of 1996 when Gingrich came to downtown Boston for a fund-raiser just blocks from the State House, Weld was nowhere to be seen. When questioned by reporters, he backed off his previously very supportive statements about the House Speaker and coyly avoided his heretofore comparison of Gingrich to colonial revolutionary leader Samuel Adams.

“You mean the lager?” a straight-faced Weld had said. At the time Weld was in a tight campaign race and had been negatively criticized for his ties to Gingrich. Weld would not repeat his kind words for Gingrich, saying only he supported his efforts to lower taxes.

Weld’s Lt. Gov. Paul Cellucci also avoided the event.

Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.), a conservative member of the class of 1994 who served on the speaker’s strategy team, asked years later, "Who wants to run for election in 2000 with a picture of Newt Gingrich?"

Gingrich Bewildered by Tabloid Frenzy
And there was also the allegation of Newt’s sexual infidelity with one of his younger former aids while he was married, which contributed to his unpopularity as the Democrats took advantage. But it was unfair for the Democrats to compare Gingrich’s sexual liaisons with Clinton’s Monica mess. Gingrich rarely and only at the strong urging of other Republicans, negatively criticized Clinton about the sex issues surrounding the scandal. What he did instead was talk more about the lying under oath.

In a speech to New Hampshire legislators during this period he strongly emphasized the breaking of laws by the president and avoided the puritanical perspective. It was more of an effort by other Republicans to talk about sex, and if Gingrich did talk about it, it was only to satisfy other elephants who saw it as an electoral tool.

Gingrich was more concerned about the “perjury and obstruction of justice” than the sex, says Blankley. “It was a constitutional issue.”

So there became a perception Gingrich could no longer lead Republicans to the promised land of electoral success. And Bush’s campaign was an implicit repudiation of the Gingrich legacy of sharp-tongued conservatism.

The GOP Loses Gingrich, and Ultimately the Issues Debate
With approval and poll numbers dropping, the GOP could use another Gingrich to come up with ideas to rally the conservative base and turn talk from Iraq back to issues. Except, having distanced themselves from the Gingrich Legacy, the GOP has precious few issues to fall back on.

Gingrich wrote in his 1998 memoir, Lessons Learned the Hard Way, that his post-1996 strategy would be to seek changes incrementally.

The speed of the revolution after 1996 was slowing down. The Republicans wanted to avoid confrontations with Clinton and in 1996 were giving him whatever he wanted on appropriations bills. Except for a couple of bills, after the government shutdown failure, there was no legislative action in the 104th or 105th Congresses that really excited conservatives.

With the weakening of the Republican juggernaut, conservative calls for Gingrich’s ouster grew louder, including an unsuccessful coup against him by rival Republican leaders. Some Republicans thought Gingrich was defenestrating his principles, others that he no longer knew what America wanted and still others that he was feckless.

The GOP Adrift, Directionless
Gingrich himself was a victim of the evolving era of sharp ad hominem attacks started against Dukakis by the first Bush Campaign and continually refined against Clinton.

Unfortunately for the former Speaker, this very type of political cannon was brutally used against him. The destruction of Newt Gingrich was the first time since Dukakis that the Dems used that playbook effectively instead of sloppily. In a way, Gingrich was the last victim of Lee Atwater (the brilliant and tough political strategist that elected the first George Bush and orchestrated an effective series of attacks against Michael Dukakis that buried the Massachusetts technocrat in the 1988 elections). Gingrich was in many ways the last of the neo-conservatives, and the most successful. After that, the conservatives drifted for a few years, and then were captured by the orbit of Bush's War on Terror.

Today, neocons are left to mutter occasionally about the Patriot Act, but are marching in goose-step with Bush instead of setting the agenda the way they did in 1994.

The GOP's directionless (at best) or back-to-big-government (at worst) movement may ultimately doom their ability to hold a House majority and retain their gains in the Senate. And, worse news for the GOP, the abandonment of base conservative issues significantly damages George W. Bush’s ability to campaign for re-election in 2004.

Despite the decade that has passed since the Gingrich and Republican red hot flame burned its hottest, who among conservatives today is better than Gingrich at finding and explaining the Republican agenda? Not Frist. Not Trent Lott. Not the GOP's near-pariah John McCain. And certainly not the present speaker of the House, whoever that is. (It’s Dennis Hastert, by the way – chosen to be the public face of House arch-conservative Tom DeLay by his fellow Republicans because in a post-Newt-world, Tom DeLay was just plain too controversial.)

And as for George Bush? Karl Rove seems intent on taking the “act presidential” strategy to new heights, avoiding all kinds of ideological combat in hopes of swaying the important middle-ground. Will this work, or will a pale, passion-less, ideologically invisible George Bush prove that Gingrich was right in the first place?

We'll find out in November.

To send comment on this article directly to the author, email pike@evote.com

[John Pike is a veteran freelance journalist based in Boston. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers and wire services, including the Boston Globe, Reason and Insight Magazines. He has seen the Republican agenda change so many times he no longer has any idea what they stand for and is seeking psychiatric help for his confusion. ]

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