Talk to Republicans and Democrats alike about former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and one word emerges.
Ego.
In a field where ego reigns supreme, Newt Gingrich’s ego is considered supersized by those surveyed by Capitol Hill Blue.
“He’s out of control,” says former Congressman and MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough.
In recent days, Gingrich has taken credit for ending the cold war, for engineering the “Reagan Revolution,” bragged about how he doesn’t need money because people pay $65,000 a pop just to hear him speak and compared himself with legendary world leaders like Winston Churchill.
“Give me a break,” says Scarborough. “His comments are an insult to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and others.”
In Congress, Scarborough was part of a group of young GOP conservatives who engineered Gingrich’s ouster as Speaker of the House, saying he had abandoned the principles of the Republican Party.
Scarborough isn’t the only Republican sounding warning signs about Gingrich’s illusion of self-importance. Republican strategist Rich Galen, a longtime Gingrich confidant, warns that “sooner or later,” Gingrich’s ego will sink his Presidential bid.
This week, Gingrich said he “helped Ronald Reagan bring down Communism.”
That came as a surprise to former members of the Reagan administration.
“Newt Gingrich is a loudmouth, boorish asshole,” says one former Reagan White House staff member who asked not to be identified. “When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, he killed the party’s chance to make a difference with his extremes. Now he wants to do the same thing to the GOP chances to defeat Barack Obama.”
Heads turned this week when Gingrich called himself “an enduring celebrity” whose fame — he claims — matches that of top tier stars.
That comment provided fodder for cable-TV satirist Stephen Colbert, who said Gingrich thinks he is a bigger star than dozens of celebrities.
Meet the “New Newt,” a repackaged Newt Gingrich currently grabbing the spotlight as the GOP flavor of the month in a crowded and volatile race for the presidential nomination.
Some see him as the long-sought conservative alternative to frontrunner Mitt Romney.
Others see him as just another Washington establishment hack with too much political baggage and too many ties to special interests.
“Gingrich’s past is a problem,” a longtime GOP operative tells Capitol Hill Blue. “He’s damaged goods.”
Damaged goods or not, Gingrich is surging in recent polls, rising to a strong second place in New Hampshire, leading in some Iowa surveys and touted as a contender to win in South Carolina.
But the same social conservatives that Gingrich seeks to attract have doubts about the new and improved Newt.
“This is a man who talks family values out of one side of his mouth while cheating on two previous wives,” says GOP voter Michelle Atkins of Atlanta, Georgia. “I have no use for a Republican Bill Clinton.”
While his personal life raises eyebrows, his activity since resigning as Speaker of the House causes even more concern.
Gingrich banked $1.6 million as a consultant for Freddie Mac, the federally-back mortgage giant that right-wingers want eliminated. He bragged in South Carolina Tuesday that he “didn’t need the money” because he pulls down $65,000 each for speeches.
Such extravagances don’t sit well with fiscal conservatives.
Then there is a changing religious affiliation. Born a Lutheran, he became a Southern Baptist for political expedience in his Georgia district but converted to Catholic after dumping his second wife for a younger woman — House staffer Calista Bisek.
Bisek and Gingrich were nailing each other while the then Speaker publicly chastised President Bill Clinton for his dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Gingrich and his trophy wife have a fondness for the high life. They ran up a half-million debt with Tiffany’s and Bisek had sizable balances on her charge account with the fancy New York jeweler while still working as a staff member for the House Agriculture Committee.
“Newt may say he doesn’t need the money, but he does need to keep those high-dollar checks rolling in to pay for Calista’s charge accounts,” says a former Gingrich campaign aide.
Last week, a federal judge in Washington handed the gun industry a painful legal setback in its efforts to prevent the Obama Administration from attacking the highly-profitable trafficking of assault rifles to the Mexican drug cartels.
Judge Rosemary Collyer -- who, incidentally, was appointed by George W. Bush -- upheld the Administration's new policy of requiring federally-licensed gun dealers in four border states [ http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/district-of-columbia/dcdce/1:2011cv01401/149464/43 ] to notify federal law enforcement authorities whenever there is a multiple purchase of certain semi-automatic rifles. Judge Collyer found this modest reporting requirement "reasonable" in light of evidence that "certain powerful long guns are weapons of choice of Mexican drug cartels" and "multiple sales of such guns is a strong indicator of gun trafficking."
The industry's reaction was a study in hypocrisy. The National Shooting Sports Foundation -- the industry trade association that brought the lawsuit -- issued a statement expressing its disappointment in the ruling [ http://www.nssfblog.com/nssf-statement-on-courts-backing-of-multiple-sales-reporting/ ], but emphasizing that "members of the firearms industry take great pride in their longstanding cooperative relationship" with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Yes, the industry is so "cooperative" that it took the ATF to court because retailers could not abide having to tell ATF when someone walks out of a Texas gun shop with ten semi-automatic assault rifles. I guess it's easy to be "cooperative" with ATF until the Bureau actually requires you to cooperate to fight gun trafficking.
The industry's strategy of contesting the reporting rule in court has clearly backfired. The gun industry has enthusiastically joined the National Rifle Association in denying that U.S. gun dealers are a primary source of guns for the Mexican cartels. Ironically, the industry's own lawsuit has given the government an opportunity to present the full range of evidence that the cartels are arming themselves with American guns, evidence the industry was unable to overcome.
For example, Judge Collyer cited a General Accountability Office report concluding that a "large proportion of the firearms fueling Mexican drug violence originated in the United States, including a growing number of increasingly lethal weapons." Judge Collyer relied on actual crime gun traces indicating that over 20,000 firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced between 2004 and 2008 originated in the United States, mostly from the border states. This is likely a vast undercount since not all crime guns seized in Mexico are traced. Contrary to the gun lobby' s denial of reality, Judge Collyer found that "the states bordering Mexico have been shown to be major sources of guns related to crime in Mexico."
Indeed, the gun lobby has so distanced itself from reality on the issue of gun trafficking to Mexico that it now claims that the ATF's misguided "Fast and Furious" operation, in which ATF allowed some 2,000 guns to move from the U.S. to the cartels in an effort to get at cartel leaders, was itself a conspiracy to justify the rifle reporting rule. In the paranoid universe of the gun lobby, there was no trafficking of guns to Mexico until ATF authorized it during the Obama Administration to justify more gun restrictions.
This absurd theory struggles to explain the fact that the Bush Administration used similarly flawed tactics to combat the tidal wave of guns moving to Mexico [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71127.html ] long before the "Fast and Furious" operation was implemented. Given that "Fast and Furious" has come under fire because ATF may have allowed guns to "walk" into Mexico, it is odd that the NRA and the gun industry would object to a reporting requirement that would enable ATF to better stop trafficked guns before they get to the border.
Let's face it. Although there are some gun dealers responsible enough to voluntarily inform the authorities about suspicious transactions, the industry is dominated by manufacturers, distributors and retailers who profit so handsomely from high-volume sales to traffickers that they will fight any serious effort to curtail them. In Judge Collyer's ruling, the industry's hypocrisy is laid bare for all to see.
Dennis Henigan is the Acting President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence [ http://www.bradycampaign.org/ ] and the author of Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy [ http://www.lethallogicthebook.com/ ](Potomac Books 2009).
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