Calm down, Newt

These days, Newt Gingrich’s modus operandi is to smear any public figure who fails to share his worldview. His insults are so overblown and outrageous that after the rhetorical dust settles, the reputation most damaged is his own.

The former speaker seems oblivious to that fact. Or maybe he knows that in a political landscape driven by talk shows, their childish insults resonate in Washington as nowhere else. In a recent New York Magazine cover story called “Cable Ugly”, Gabriel Sherman noted that among most prime-time cable hosts, “schoolyard rules rule.”

Because he has been spewing childish political insults for years, Newt Gingrich just may be a man ahead of his time.