Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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After Newt Gingrich gave a speech in San Diego recently, he was asked by a member of the audience what can be done about “the toxic polarization between the left and the right.”
The former House speaker pretty much sidestepped the heart of the matter and focused on the questioner’s ancillary concerns about how the political climate in the U.S. might affect the country’s ability to deal with foreign rivals.
The Georgia Republican expressed concern should a conflict arise in the near future, but said he was optimistic that the nation would be all right in the long term.
“We go through cycles like this,” he said Wednesday at a conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative-leaning organization that promotes policies limiting government, boosting free markets and giving more power to the states.
What wasn’t part of his answer is that a direct line can be drawn from today’s “toxic polarization” to the tactics Gingrich used to gain power in the 1980s and ’90s.
Gingrich had his share of legislative successes, though not everyone agreed with the passage of capital gains tax cuts and welfare reform. But policy probably isn’t what he’s going to be remembered for.It is the hard-edged strategies Gingrich employed — at once innovative and divisive — that shaped how political battles have been waged in America ever since.
That approach helped him engineer the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 1994 elections for the first time in 40 years and landed him the speakership. (In the “life comes at you fast” department: Gingrich stepped down as speaker four years later under pressure from GOP members following a bad election year and an ethics scandal of his own.)
To be clear, Gingrich may be the godfather of the Republican political modus operandi, but some of the tactics have been adopted across the spectrum for years.
Gingrich didn’t invent harsh partisanship or negative politics, but he brought them to a new level. He understood changes in technology and media and how to exploit them before others.
Gingrich engaged in personal attacks, demonization of opponents, conspiracy theories, media manipulation, and making popular-sounding proposals that didn’t always come to pass. He railed against cronyism and corruption in Congress, and not just among Democrats. He promoted the conservative ideology of President Ronald Reagan and put fangs on it.
Those are familiar hallmarks of former President Donald Trump’s politics. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Gingrich, a presidential contender himself in 2012, was among Trump’s inner circle during the 2016 campaign. At one point, Trump reportedly talked with Gingrich about becoming his running mate.
An article on the Salon website called Gingrich “The man who was Trump before Trump.”
When the public-interest cable television operation C-SPAN launched in March of 1979, Gingrich had been a member of Congress for just over two months. He saw an opportunity others didn’t in C-SPAN training a camera on the House “well” where members make speeches from a pair of lecterns.
Gingrich would go down there and give fiery speeches in a largely empty chamber at night.
“Initially, Democrats dismissed the stunt as amateurish and ineffective,” wrote Julian E. Zelizer, a political science professor at Princeton University and author of the book “Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.”
But Gingrich correctly surmised he could connect to people across the country, who could not see that the House chambers were empty. He attacked Democrats by name, who viewers may have thought were there and didn’t respond. That angered then-Speaker Tip O’Neill, D-Mass., who wanted to change the House rules to allow the camera to pan to all the vacant seats.
“You deliberately stood in that well before an empty House and challenged these people, and challenged their patriotism, and it is the lowest thing that I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in Congress,” O’Neill said.
That confrontation elevated Gingrich and rallied Republicans around him.
“Gingrich was absolutely thrilled. O’Neill had taken the bait,” Zelizer wrote.
Before Gingrich, members of Congress in both parties often had congenial relations and, despite their differences, would regularly drink, dine and play cards together. That doesn’t happen so much these days.
Gingrich’s tactics pushed the envelope of the norms of the day. Now, they are the norm.
Early on, he also figured out the power of another expanding form of communication: talk radio.
Gingrich became allied with Rush Limbaugh, a symbiotic relationship that some analysts contend created the modern political commentator show. The documentary “Rush Limbaugh’s America” noted that a call to action from Limbaugh could result in thousands, if not millions, of people jamming Capitol Hill phone lines. Gingrich began faxing talking points to radio show hosts around the country.
“It was like he was calling in airstrikes,” said Zoe Chace of National Public Radio’s “This American Life.”
Gingrich zeroed in on populist issues. As part of the 1994 campaign, he and others came up with the “Contract With America,” a pledge that if Republicans were in power, they would cut taxes, reform welfare, shrink government, reduce regulations and demand more transparency from government and Congress.
Gingrich and Republicans nationalized what had been seen as local congressional races with a common ideology.
Gingrich said Wednesday that such a contract was easier to do back then than it would be today because most Republicans didn’t actually think they’d win a majority in the House and have to act on the proposals. He added that at least a couple of members who signed the contract later confided they didn’t agree with some of the points.
It wasn’t so much that winning the election was a means to enacting the policies as it was the policies were a means of potentially taking control of the House.
It’s hard to imagine congressional Republicans today could overcome their divisions to agree on such a document, even though it might make for a helpful contrast with Democrats, who have been fighting mightily among themselves over their own agenda.
Deborah Sullivan Brennan of The San Diego Union-Tribune noted that Gingrich on Wednesday pitched a “this ain’t working” theme for Republicans in next year’s election, which he said will be driven by growing public concern over crime, homelessness, education, gasoline prices and the economy in general.
But he suggested more is needed.
“What are the fixes?” Gingrich asked.
Michael Smolens is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune.
