Half a Gingrich

...Doesn't Cut It

by Patrick J. Shanahan
03/01/05

Having been convincingly (if narrowly) defeated at the polls in back-to-back-to-back elections, Democrats have decided that the path to victory lies in the direction of obstruction and destruction. In the Senate they will continue down the road of filibuster and character assassination, using unprecedented obstructionist tactics to keep the President's highly qualified candidates from even getting a vote by the whole Senate.

In the House, they have apparently decided to follow the example of Newt Gingrich. When faced with repeated rejection, most people begun to dabble in fantasy, finding exotic rationales - and even conspiracy theories - for their unpopularity. Democrats have convinced themselves that their problem is that they have been too “nice.” This may sound odd to conservatives who have heard nothing a steady stream of invective, insult and accusation for the past three decades. It may seem even odder to those conservative organizations who were punished by the Clinton Administration for exercising their right to free speech. But there it is. Democrats have convinced themselves that the reason they keep losing is that they just sit there and take Republican abuse while failing to stand up for themselves.

But no more. The “new” Democrats are going to adopt a scorched earth political strategy, built on obstruction, harassment and personal destruction. In doing so they illustrate two things. The first is that liberalism is inherently destructive. Liberals have always felt more comfortable tearing tings down that building them up. The second is that they do not understand Newt Gingrich or the 1994 Congressional revolution at all.

Newt Gingrich in the 1980s and 90s was a cross between William F. Buckley, Jr., Alvin Toffler, and the Tasmanian Devil. One part of the revolution he masterminded was to play unabashed hardball politics. He understood the value to momentum in politics and believed that Republicans had been back on their heels since Watergate. He sought to change that, with remarkable tactical success. He challenged corruption and entrenched privilege in the House, and moved forward an agenda with a relentless enthusiasm and rhetorical energy that changed the default momentum in the house of Representatives, for good.

But that was just personality and tactics. They were the “hows” of his revolution. The secret that nobody on the left wants to remember was that the guts of the revolution was explicit, ideological, policy prescriptions. It was the Contract With America. Gingrich at heart was the best kind of ideologue. He was in many ways the anti-politician. He was uncouth and loud and aggressive, but at heart he had a profound belief that conservative principles were right, they were necessary for the creation of a bright future for this country, and they were shared by a majority of the American people.

The Contract with America makes sense only in light of Gingrich's deep confidence that the American people shared these beliefs, and that the biggest reason for Republican marginalization was their unwillingness to state them forthrightly.

The genius of the 1994 elections was using the Contract as a lever to nationalize Congressional elections. Tip O'Neill famously posited that all Congressional elections were local. And that is generally true. The 1994 Congressional elections were in essence a referendum on an ideology. And that ideology won, as Republicans regained the House for the first time in eons. With, perhaps, a little help from the incompetent first two years of the Clinton Administration.

Gingrich and the conservatives would eventually stumble, then implode. Their ideological energy exceeded their political acumen. But we must not forget that it was ideas, not tactics, that brought them success.

That is something the Democrats do not understand. To attempt to imitate Gingrich in the absence of positive ideas is like Jack Frost in the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas," a ghoul seeking to imitate Santa, but lacking any idea of the animating essence of Christmas. The Democrats are kind of like that now. They have, by my count, exactly zero positive ideas about anything at all. To simply oppose anything the Republicans stand for, while calling for a return to New Deal politics, is to be a shell of a party, an ideological shadow flitting across our national landscape. If the Democrats want to go down this road, I say let 'em. If they wish to embrace that aspect of Gingrich's revolution that led to his downfall, please feel free.

I would worry that they might catch on and produce a Democrat Contract with America, but they would need ideas in order to do that.