Yesterday Newt Gingrich stood before 60+ conservative voices and answered some tough questions. While I understand there are many negatives to the man, the fact that he has no hesitation to enter the lions den is admirable.
His speech started with the obvious:
“if Obama is re-elected America will be a very, very different country from the one we grew-up in.”
Obvious but a oh so important point. This election is very important and this very fact is one reason why people should pause before they pull the lever for this guy. Can he win the general election?
The Speaker then went on to outline the four parts of his 21st Century Contract with America: A set of legislative proposals to shift America back to job creation, prosperity, freedom, and safety; A “Day One Plan” of Executive Orders to be signed on inauguration day to immediately transform the way the executive branch works; A training program for the transition teams and the appointees who will lead the shift back to Constitutional, limited government; and, a system of citizen involvement to help us sustain grassroots support for change and help implement the change through 2021.
…One of the earliest and toughest questions came from Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli who noted many of the ideas Speaker Gingrich had championed seemed like they might end-up growing government. “How can we be sure, what’s the restraint on you that these ideas won’t end up being more big government?” asked Cuccinelli.
Speaker Gingrich replied to laughter that “there’s nothing to restrain a President from doing something dumb, but I trust the people in this room to tell me if that is the case.” But then he noted more seriously that, “I’m a Federalist. I look to the Federalist Papers and the Constitution to guide me and restrain government.”
…When asked about how he intended to win the general election Gingrich said he expected Obama to have $1 billion to spend, but that he would counter that by challenging Obama to a series of seven Lincoln – Douglas-style un-moderated debates, “…and he’ll say yes. There are two reasons: The first is his ego. Can you imagine him looking in the mirror? Graduate from Columbia, Harvard Law, and editor of the Law Review. How is he going to say that he’s afraid to be on the same podium as a West Georgia College teacher? Plus, if he says ‘no’ I’m going to say ‘the White House is now my scheduler’ and wherever he goes I will show-up within four hours to take apart whatever he said, that’s how Lincoln got Douglas to debate.”
His ability to destroy people in debates is well known and one reason someone might vote for the guy. Everyone knows how important the general election debates are, and his idea of forcing the Lincoln/Douglas style debates is a great idea with his skill.
So then we are left with the question, if he did win the Presidency would he indeed govern as a conservative, or would he turn back to his old neo-conservative ways?
Or do we trust that Romney will govern as a conservative?
Steven Hayward makes a Churchill comparison that is interesting:
But before becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill was often dismissed in similar terms by members of his own party, who complained that “his planning is all wishing and guessing,” that he was “a genius without judgment,” and that he had been “on every side of every question.” His many non-fiction books were even characterized as “autobiographies disguised as history of the universe.” This is not to suggest that Newt is the next Churchill, which would indeed feed Newt’s grandiosity. Rather, it is to prompt us to recognize one important fact and to ask two questions that have heretofore not been asked.
The important fact is this: The example of Churchill (and also Reagan to some extent) shows that we cannot prospectively identify those whom we will later come to laud as great statesmen. Very few leading Republicans thought Reagan would be Reagan, even after the 1980 election, just as Churchill was not a popular choice of his own party in 1940. One of the best studies of Churchill’s pre-1940 career could almost be adapted for Newt, Robert Rhodes James’s Churchill: A Study in Failure.
Two questions must be asked in order to judge whether Newt might have Churchillian qualities (both good and bad) once in office, or whether Romney’s predictable managerial qualities are more suited to the present moment.
The first question is whether we require someone utterly unconventional to match up to the circumstances of the moment. The same negative qualities that kept Churchill from high office in the 1930s — his resolute stubbornness, his unconstrained and unpredictable imagination and occasional recklessness — paradoxically made him the best person to lead the nation when it reached the point of extreme crisis in May 1940. But the crisis had to reach the extreme before the Churchill option became thinkable.
Even the outbreak of war in 1939 didn’t immediately lead to the thought that Churchill should become prime minister. And even after the invasion of France, it wasn’t clear that his mixed qualities would prove a source of reassurance to the nation, or a formula for success in the war. Is Newt’s long-time embrace of “radical change” what is necessary to address the fiscal crisis of our time? One reason a large portion of the Tea Party has embraced Newt, his mixed record notwithstanding, is that he appears to be the only candidate who will both argue for and attempt to implement the large changes necessary to right our listing ship of state.
“The Conservatives have never liked nor trusted me,” Churchill wrote in the 1920s. According to King George VI’s biographer biographer, the king was “bitterly opposed” to Churchill’s becoming prime minister. He remained a figure of suspicion within his own party even after he became prime minister in 1940. The description of cabinet secretary John Colville sounds like much of the Newt-angst of conservatives right now: “In May 1940 the mere thought of Churchill as Prime Minister send a cold chill down the spines of the staff working at 10 Downing Street. . . . Seldom can a Prime Minister have taken office with the Establishment . . . so dubious of the choice and so prepared to find its doubts justified.” “This is not the last war administration by a long way,” a leading member of Churchill’s own party remarked. Another Tory MP, Peter Eckersley, wrote: “Winston won’t last five months! Opposition from Tories is already beginning.” MP David Kier wrote in his diary a month after Churchill took office: “The more I think of the position, the more uncertain the future of Winston’s present Government is.” One Conservative-party grandee wrote that “I regard this [Churchill as PM] as a greater disaster than the invasion of the Low Countries.”
As the British learned, he was anything but a disaster. But nominating Newt is a huge risk. I guess it comes down to whether we are willing to take that risk. As Mata wrote earlier in her excellent post, the liberals are predicting a landslide if Newt is nominated which actually has me wondering, as Mata is, are we on to something with Newt:
What I want is someone who sees the way out of a fiscal disaster, and won’t take crap from either side. They must be fearless from political assault and threats. I’m not interested in them putting their personal popularity or legacy first. I don’t expect a perfect individual… especially from a politician. But don’t do the dance of blame. Own up, and move on. And most importantly, they have to be a believer of this nation’s free market and capitalist economic foundation.
If the mutual hatred by both sides for Newt is any indication, it may be that Newt is just the guy. He’s certainly adept at being a scrapper, and is not beaten down easily. And it should be the responsibility of the Tea Party conservatives, and those who may end up putting him in office, to make sure he holds true to small government and fiscal responsible beliefs.
Man o’ man…times like these I really wish Sarah had entered.
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