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RELATED LINKSInternal LinksProfiles: External Links"Our Godless Constitution" by Brooke Allen Conservative Political Action Conference website Gingrich profile at AEI website Norman Solomon's: "Gingrich & The Susan Smith Case" Cursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Bill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs' Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz God, Government and GingrichNewt Gingrich is on the Comeback Trail"You know what that tells you? It [winning the Comeback Player of the Year Award] tells you were terrible the year before." -- Pitcher Rick Sutcliffe, 1992, the year he won the award. Newt Gingrich, who is firmly embedded on the New York Times bestseller list with his new book Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract With America, is both selling books and seeing if people will buy a future for him in electoral politics. Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House and the leader of the 1994 Republican Revolution, was the architect (along with PR man Frank Luntz) of the "Contract With America" -- a document often referred to as the "Contract On America," with its series of slash and burn proposals. Will the American people buy his latest Contract and will it lead to the launch of a full-blown political comeback? Americans love comebacks; they are as American as apple pie, chow mien, and hip-hop. Movie stars make comebacks -- think John Travolta in Pulp Fiction; books make comebacks -- the novelist Henry Roth wrote Call it Sleep in 1934, but it didn't land on the bestseller list until it was reissued in 1964; and most professional sports give out annual Comeback Player of the Year awards. If a player that may have suffered a season-ending injury or illness the year before or just plain had a lousy year(s), and subsequently manages to recover the magic, then he/she becomes a worthy Comeback Player of the Year candidate. Political comebacks are a bit harder to find, especially if the politician has been forced to slink off the national stage. Once disgraced, most politicians are grateful to be allowed an easy ride into the sunset, rather than being sent to the slammer. In the twentieth century Richard Nixon perfected the political comeback. If there really were Political Comeback of the Year awards Nixon would have retired them by the time he died in 1994. His first comeback came while serving as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower when he went on television with wife Pat by his side and delivered his now famous/infamous "Checkers" speech, denying that he had abused a secret Republican slush fund. Nixon's second comeback came years after he dispensed his "You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore" comment at a bitter press conference announcing his retirement from politics after losing the 1962 California gubernatorial race to Pat Brown. Six years later, he was elected president and was handily re-elected in 1972. His final comeback took years to forge: After he was forced to resign the presidency over the Watergate scandal, Nixon spent the rest of his life refashioning his image. At his death he was both a disgraced and dishonored president, and a "statesman" who, as then President Bill Clinton acknowledged at Nixon's funeral, gave him "wise counsel, especially with regard to Russia." Even now, five years into the twenty-first century, Nixon is making a comeback of sorts; a movie titled The Assassination of Richard Nixon is playing at a local Cineplex. Gingrich: 'I'm glad to be back'In 1994, in no small part through the resolute work and long-term vision of Newt Gingrich, Republicans took over the US House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. On February 7, 2005, Gingrich appeared at North Carolina State University where he "shared his vision for the future of health care in North Carolina and across the country," News 14 Carolina reported. Two weeks later, for the first time in several years, Gingrich appeared at a February 23 breakfast in Chicago sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. Once a regular at these events, Gingrich opened with the line, "I'm glad to be back." His speech was characterized by the Chicago Sun-Times as "an intellectual and historical romp...a short course on the ills facing the nation and, naturally, the cures." After talking about God in public life, Gingrich then borrowed a page from the playbook of President Bush, brushing aside charges of past moral lapses as opportunities for personal growth. Gingrich has been married three times -- most recently to a congressional aide he had an affair with. When asked about his fidelity at the February 23 breakfast in Chicago he readily confessed to being "a sinner." For Gingrich, "Coming back" doesn't necessarily mean that he actually ever went away. Although he hasn't recently had nearly the presence he had before he quit the House in 1998, for several years he has been a high-profile and partisan analyst for the Fox News Channel and a 'Senior Fellow' at the American Enterprise Institute ( AEI - website). Judging from the Sun-Times report, Gingrich has chosen a compelling combo to drive his comeback: God and government. Those two topics are much on Gingrich's mind these days; he told the breakfasters that "The fight over whether or not our rights come from our Creator is much more real and much more vivid and has become intense." Gingrich wrote in his new book that "We must re-establish that our rights come from our Creator and that an America that has driven God out of the public arena is an America on the way to decay and defeat." "I tell you upfront, I'm a sinner; I suspect you are, too," he told the Sun-Times reporter, and then moved on to his scripted message: "Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about whether as a historian I can talk about how the Declaration of Independence was written, what Thomas Jefferson stands for, and whether it is good for American families to go on a walking tour of Washington to see historically the absolute fact that the Founding Fathers were deeply committed to the idea our rights come from God." (For a convincing and countervailing opinion see "Our Godless Constitution" by Brooke Allen, who maintains that despite the Bush Administration's insistence that America was founded on Christian principles, America was in reality founded "on Enlightenment ones." "God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent." Not to mention that the word "God" is not mentioned in the US Constitution.) The Christian Science Monitor's Linda Feldmann and David T. Cook also reported on Gingrich's breakfast appearance: "Listening to Newt Gingrich is still like trying to take a sip out of a fire hose. Make that a fire hose on steroids. Ten years since the insurgent Republican from Georgia became Speaker of the House and six years since he left, he has updated his message of reform -- and with no less of a sense of urgency." Gingrich also appeared to have some advice for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay: "Republicans in the House have to look at the reality that if we make sense as a party right now it's because we are the reform party, and anything that risks being the reform party is more dangerous for us than it is for the Democrats," Gingrich said. "They should be very careful." "Talking with Newt Gingrich about ethics may be like talking to Willie Sutton about bank robbery," the Houston Chronicle's Cragg Hines recently wrote in a story headlined "If Newt is warning DeLay about ethics, times are bad." Wrote Hines: "You listen carefully to such an experienced practitioner, but you wonder: If he's so smart why did he get caught so often." At the recently concluded annual Conservative Political Action Conference (website), Gingrich got his red meat/red state swerve on. He told attendees that as co-chair, along with former U.S. Senate Democrat Leader George Mitchell, of a task force on U.N. reform, he would "bring into the room with me one simple premise...Any organization that permits Sudan to join its human rights commission while investigating genocide in that country is in need of profound and fundamental reform." Nuggets of NewtIn 1991, the Los Angeles Times reported that Newt told a group of young Republicans to "do things that may be wrong; but do something," explaining that one of the GOP's "great problems" was that "we don't encourage you to be nasty." In a life filled with outrageous comments and ethically-challenged activities, perhaps the rhetorical topper was the comment he made about the Susan Smith case three days before the polls opened in 1994, equating the murder of children to Democratic values. As reported by the Associated Press, Gingrich said of Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two young sons: "The mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change and the only way you get change is to vote Republican (emphasis mine). That's the message for the last three days." (For more on this see Norman Solomon's piece "Gingrich & The Susan Smith Case".) Newt Gingrich forced House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) to resign. Gingrich engineered the shutdown of the government in 1995. In 1997, he became the first Speaker of the House in U.S. history to be censured and fined for ethical misconduct. A year later he resigned and was going to be replaced by Congressman Bob Livingston (R-La.) but he too was forced to withdraw because of disclosures about an extra-marital affair. After Gingrich's resignation, he become a fellow at both the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution (website). In 1999, he founded the Gingrich Group (website), which according to its website is "a communications and consulting firm that specializes in transformational change." In January 2003 the Gingrich Group launched a new project called the "Center for Health Transformation" -- "a collaboration of public and private sector leaders dedicated to the creation of a 21st Century Intelligent Health System in which knowledge saves lives and saves money for every American." Gingrich's new book posits that if not corrected, five things threaten to destroy the US: Islamic terrorists and rogue dictatorships armed with nuclear or biological weapons; the removal of God from the public square; diminished patriotism and understanding of America's history; economic decline due to inadequate science and math education; and overburdened Medicare and Social Security. His prescription: simplify the tax code; government investment in science and technology; privatization of Social Security; tort reform; and privatizing as much of the federal government as possible. Gingrich also advocates enhancing America's intelligence capabilities, reforming its election system, developing a more intelligent health care system and balancing the federal budget. Gingrich's future political possibilities will hinge on more than the proposals in his latest book, his history of ethical lapses, smarmy comments, multiple affairs, and the abandonment of his wife while she had cancer. He did, after all, lead the Republican Revolution. Does he want to be back in the driver's seat? According to The Hill, Gingrich has scheduled "trips to New Hampshire and Iowa this spring, but not necessarily to launch a presidential campaign." (You can read Gingrich's columns and follow his latest adventures by going direct to newt.org. You can also meet with Gingrich fans and discuss his new book.) With editorial assistance from Alan Flatt. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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