Misty Watercolor Memories

Of the Way We Were.

That 90s Show

Way back in the long-ago-time of the 1990s (an decade which, for very complicated reasons, the Right has decided mostly never happened) this is how a New York Times editorial characterized the dawn of the Age of Newt:

Newt Gingrich, Authoritarian
Published: November 13, 1994

His language is as revelatory as it is familiar. He describes himself as a battler against McGovernites, liberal elitists and the media. He will restore order and middle-class values. Welcome to Speaker Gingrich's Retro-World. Mr. Gingrich has reinvented the political landscape of his youth -- a Sun Belt where politicians communicate in the venerable code words of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace.

The code words, of course, originally had much to do with race; Senator Goldwater and Governor Wallace bandied them, after all, in a battle for Deep South electoral votes. This dialogue swirled around young Newt Gingrich as he was inventing his political persona. But this race-based, anger-charged politics mutated in Mr. Gingrich and some others of his generation into a more generalized moral authoritarianism. Mr. Gingrich wants to be obeyed, both within a Republican majority that exists mainly to rubber stamp his legislative menu and within a country where behavior would be regulated by a "society that is emphatic about right and wrong."

The authoritarian undergirdings of Mr. Gingrich's politics show not only in the conventional ways, such as his outlining of a nation of plentiful executions where juries and judges cannot exercise their independent judgment about probation and sentencing. It is even more tellingly revealed by the areas of individual social behavior Mr. Gingrich wants to bring under control. Schoolchildren will be required by law to seek their education in classrooms where prayer is imposed by the will of the majority. As soon as he gets the votes, medical decisions on abortion will be taken from the hands of women and physicians and the treatment itself proscribed by the state.
...

Three years later, with most of the wreckage of his Reign of Error strewn behind him for all to see, this is how a New York Times editorial by a certain up-and-coming Conservative wunderkind characterized the twilight of the Age of Newt (tints and highlights added for extra body and bounce):

Nothing Fails Like Success
By Andrew Sullivan
Published: April 9, 1997

...for all their differences, Mr. Major and Mr. Gingrich face a similar predicament. Both are the first true conservative leaders to emerge in Britain and America after the cold war, and both have presided over an unprecedented consolidation of the conservative gains of the 1980's. And yet, despite these real achievements, both have been rewarded with approval ratings of around 30 percent and political parties in revolt. Torn apart by their fellow conservatives, both leaders have become symbols of how fragile Anglo-American conservatism has become.

Yes, of course, both Mr. Major and Mr. Gingrich made their fair share of personal errors. Mr. Gingrich fatally overplayed his hand in the budget negotiations of 1995 and 1996. Mr. Major began his second term with a disastrous attempt to peg the pound to the Deutsche mark
...

But a very good case can be made nonetheless that their achievements vastly outweigh their howlers. Without Mr. Gingrich, the realignment of 1994 would never have happened. Without him, a balanced budget and welfare reform would never have been shoehorned into President Clinton's agenda.
...

And how did conservatives reward their stalwart leaders? For the most part, they have torn at their throats, stabbed them in the back and pushed them to the edge of political extinction.
...

Sure, both leaders have failed to provide the ideological coherence and excitement their supporters remember from the 1980's. But they have failed to provide it because the ideology that inspires their followers bears little relation to the post-cold war reality these leaders actually have to face.

In America, Mr. Gingrich is increasingly isolated from the religious and economic right. The fundamentalist right demands a constitutional amendment to ban virtually all abortion. The economic right demands deep tax cuts as well as a balanced budget. Any governing conservative knows that these things are pipe dreams in conflicted, modern America, and so tries to tack around or toward them.

...Mr. Gingrich's attempts to square the circle -- by deftly avoiding social issues and tactically delaying tax cuts in favor of a balanced budget -- has only furthered his isolation on the right. From Jack Kemp to Ralph Reed, from The Wall Street Journal to William Kristol's screeds in The Weekly Standard, the derision is deafening.
...

But the truth is, both Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Major are the true conservatives. They recognize that, after the cold war, clear-cut ideological crusades are no longer easy ventures and that, in the wake of conservatism's recent gains, pragmatic consolidation -- and tactical advance -- is by far the best policy.

Now that the Labor and Democratic parties have moved much closer to the Tory and Republican consensus, the game is no longer a race to the extremes; it's a chess match for the conservative center. And that requires the kind of pragmatic politics that ideological conservatives find as inimical in America as Europhobes do in Britain.

There are, of course, no viable alternative conservative leaders to either Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Major, because there isn't really a viable alternative politics. Kempism failed in 1996. The women of America are hardly likely to rally to a party led by Dick Armey or Pat Buchanan. Popular mavericks, like Senator John McCain, would never win over the party base.
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But none of that seems to matter to the new Robespierres of the right. In Britain right now, the right wing has effectively hounded its own competent, intrepid leader off the edge of the political cliff. In Washington, it seems only a matter of time before the purists of the party do exactly the same thing.

In one very specific sense, Newt really was ahead of his time: he blazed an electoral trail by enthusiastically diving to the absolute bottom of the political sewer on massive scale 20 years ago

A Category Five stink of racist, grifting, opportunistic authoritarianism was blasting off of Gingrich 20 years ago, and other than getting rich playing piano in the parlor of the D.C. whorehouse and learning to strap laser guidance systems into the bombs he flings around in every direction, he has not changed one iota.

Which brings us back to the same damn question the Left has been asking for decades: How is it that so many Liberals can see all of this so clearly and $o few Con$ervative$ can $ee it at all?