Newt Gingrich: An old dog up to his old tricks

Gingrich likes to pose as a serious thinker and idea man, but his embrace of such melodramatic hyperbole is more befitting a cartoon character. But Gingrich has always undermined his attempts to be seen as a statesman by immature bomb-throwing. After the 2008 campaign — during which he originated the GOP’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” initiative — he positioned himself as a post-partisan player, declaring that he wanted to promote a “tri-partisan” approach to politics that would bring together Democrats, Republicans, and independents. He denounced the Republican Party for releasing an ad attempting to tie Obama to disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, decrying “the sort of negative attack politics that the voters rejected in 2006 and 2008.” Yet now — after the Tea Party explosion has made attack politics rather popular on the right — Gingrich is willing (and eager) to engage in the most foul of attacks: accusing the president of purposefully endangering the country because he and his crew prefer America’s enemies. This is the worst form of calumny…

Worse, in those days, he advocated making politics more negative than it had been. During his AEI speech, Gingrich fleetingly referred to George Orwell’s classic essay “Politics and the English Language,” in which the British author excoriated routine political rhetoric. In the 1990s, Gingrich’s political action committee, GOPAC, mounted a deliberate effort to debase political debate. It disseminated to GOP candidates a memo called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” Orwell would have been amused. The memo contained a list of suggested words Republicans should use when describing Democratic opponents. That list included “sick,” “pathetic,” “betray,” “bizarre,” “cheat,” and “traitors.” Yes, traitors. Which brings us back to Thursday’s speech. This old dog is sticking with the old tricks — claiming that his foes do not truly care for this country. He is trying to whip up and exploit the paranoia and fear of the Tea Party right. Perhaps with some desperation: His above-mentioned colleague told me that Gingrich, who’s 67 years old, realizes 2012 is his last chance to take a shot at the big prize.