From my perspective, Newt Gingrich would make a terrible president of the United States. The anti-abortion Christian conservative congressman from Georgia was the darling of the New Right when he rose to power in the early 1980s and his 1994 Contract with America, a promising idea which was a colossal missed opportunity in policy and in action, demonstrates why he’s a failure, not a success, as a legislator. Gingrich wasted the GOP’s historic 1994 House victory and tinkered with a slightly smaller welfare state thereafter and the reality of our collapsing economy speaks for itself in this regard. He squandered enormous public support for capitalism in the wake of the Clinton health care plan debacle with his subsequent initiatives, compromises and statements, not to mention his narcissistic, Clintonian antics.
The former college professor is the embodiment of a self-centered, power-lusting politician and nothing he says is credible. By the time Gingrich became recipient of the most severe penalty ever imposed on a Speaker of the House, the first time in history the House of Representatives punished the Speaker on ethical grounds, he had crucially refused to include expansion of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) in his 1994 policy pledge, effectively killing a potentially powerful hedge against socialized medicine and he had completely, totally failed to articulate a case for capitalism. In fact, Gingrich thoroughly and repeatedly accepted and advocated the moral directive of the left: shut up and obey the state and live for the sake of others. Gingrich is the true paleo-conservative, with a pragmatic streak: bereft of new ideas that advance liberty and capitalism, he pompously draws upon whatever ideals seem popular in order to expedite a return to the traditions of the past.
It’s true that Mitt Romney also fraudulently claims to support liberty and capitalism while seeking more government control of religion and economics. But slick Romney’s desperate willingness to do or say anything to gain power is widely known and acknowledged. There is no doubt that President Obama is ruining the country, and the sooner he goes the better, but for those who seek a secular republic based on individual rights, Newt Gingrich is the ultimate Trojan Horse.