National Review’s Katrina Trinko attended one of Newt Gingrich’s town hall meetings for local tea partiers today:
One thing that struck me was his earnestness in pushing bipartisanship, not a typical theme at Tea Party events….He spoke about having to attract Democratic votes to stay in Congress during his early years as House member in Georgia, and referred to working to get Democratic votes in the ’80s to pass Reagan’s initiatives. “I grew up in politics learning a lot about how you build bipartisan coalitions,” Gingrich observed.
…”There are a thousand small things that create bipartisanship even if you disagree about big things,” Gingrich said. “And it’s really important to remember that, all the little human things that a good leader can do to get the city of Washington to work again. Tragically, none of them are being done by the current team.”
I read that with my mouth agape. If there’s a single person in the country more responsible than Newt for the poisonous state of partisan politics in America today, I don’t know who it is. Remember these gems down through the years?
1978, speaking to a group of College Republicans: “I think that one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”
1989, speaking about the Democratic leadership in Congress: “These people are sick…They are so consumed by their own power, by a Mussolini-like ego, that their willingness to run over normal human beings and to destroy honest institutions is unending.”
2011, speaking about the current Democratic president: “Obama is the most serious radical threat to traditional America ever to occupy the White House.”
There’s no cherry picking here. These are all workaday themes for the GOP’s self-proclaimed philosopher king, one of the nastiest, most malignant pieces of work ever to grace American politics. Newt Gingrich extolling the virtues of bipartisanship is like Hannibal Lecter promoting the value of good nutrition.
