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“So now that we’ve dealt with the bogus issue of Christina Jeffrey, what else do you have against Newt Gingrich?”

You mean the Christina Jeffrey who was Newt’s personal friend and colleague? The Christina that he had taught college with and whose work he knew? That bogus Christina Jeffrey?

You need to stop digging that hole deeper. You never heard of her before I mentioned her or your wouldn’t be adding more stupid comments to the ones that you’ve already racked up. Go wave your pom-poms and be a Newt fanboy, who cares?

The fact is that Newt himself acknowledges that he screwed up by abandoning his friend Christina, and here we have you dumping on her. But then Newt knows what he did and you, well you’re a dope who is aligning yourself with the likes of Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank.

Here’s more on the subject from NR at the time:

http://faculty.ung.edu/bfriedman/bfried/simmons.htm

‘In 1989 Mrs. Jeffrey met Newt Gingrich, who would soon become her congressman when she moved to Georgia to teach at Kennesaw State College. As a professor of political science, she arranged internships for her students to work in Gingrich’s district office. She also helped him promote his televised college course, “Renewing American Civilization,” defending him when other members of the faculty objected to the course being taught there. Thus were the two professionally and politically linked before the Republican victory last November. In December, he offered her the post of House Historian, a job she had not sought. She accepted. By New Year’s Day, she had moved with her family to Arlington, Virginia, to take up her new duties.

They didn’t last long. Scenting blood, Democrats charged to the floor to voice their indignation that a “Nazi sympathizer” and “racist” had been named House Historian. After a few days’ bombardment from colleagues and the press, Gingrich capitulated and fired Mrs. Jeffrey on the evening of January 9. In the aftermath of the firing, members of Congress showed no compunction about having used Mrs. Jeffrey as cannon fodder. Representative Frank, whom I tried unsuccessfully to reach, told the Washington Post, “Gingrich is the one who fired her. We just pointed out what she had done.” Josh Isay, spokesman for Representative Schumer, said, “If anyone ruined Christina Jeffrey’s chances to be House Historian, it was Christina Jeffrey. She was fired for no other reason than her own extremist views of history and education.” Even White House spokesman Michael McCurry joined the fray, wondering “how someone with those extreme views would have been considered in the first place.”

However reprehensible such behavior may be coming from her enemies, it is at least politically understandable. Not so much the behavior of her allies. Immediately upon Mrs. Jeffrey’s dismissal, a ruckus arose over what Gingrich and his staff had known about her background before she was hired. “What she said, what she stood for, was not hidden,” Schumer said. “Why didn’t they find it?”

This is not a bad question. On January 12, three days after the firing, Richard Cohen wrote a scurrilous column for the Washington Post in which he called Mrs. Jeffrey a “jerk” whose criticism of the original grant proposal had been “insensitive and outrageous, not to mention false.” But he also speculated that “the swiftness with which Gingrich dispatched Jeffrey to her academic Dogpatch suggests that he knew all too well what she had written.” And he implicated Gingrich’s staff as well. This drew the ire of Tony Blankley, Gingrich’s press secretary, who wrote back to the Post and, referring to Mrs. Jeffrey as “that woman,” claimed that he and the Speaker had been unaware of the earlier controversy. Unquestioned by Cohen and Blankley alike was Mrs. Jeffrey’s guilt; the only issue to be settled was the assignment of blame for bringing her aboard.

But those who know Mrs. Jeffrey well have rejected the charges of bigotry since they first arose. In 1987, after the first story about the curriculum evaluation appeared in the New York Daily News, Rabbi Bernard Honan of Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville, Virginia, wrote on Mrs. Jeffrey’s behalf to the Atlanta chapter of the Anti-Defamation League. Rabbi Honan, who had known Mrs. Jeffrey for 17 years, said she was “an intensely fair person, and it is my conviction that she has been maligned viciously.” He noted that she had “suffered mental anguish unfairly at the hands of a newspaper . . . which has never been known for the quality of its journalism or for its objective reporting.”

Perhaps the most impassioned and eloquent defense has come from Barry D. Friedman, an associate professor of political science at North Georgia College, who has known Mrs. Jeffrey for 8 years. Friedman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, hurriedly faxed a letter to Gingrich’s office on January 9, certifying Mrs. Jeffrey’s credentials and character. “From where I stand,” he wrote, “seeing one of my closest friends vilified as a person who is hateful toward or insensitive to people of my ethnic background would be laughable were it not so manifestly and profoundly unjust.”

Three weeks later, Mrs. Jeffrey’s job lost and her reputation soiled, Friedman wrote another letter to Gingrich. “By making it apparent that Christina is a villain, you and Mr. Blankley have manufactured a smoke screen that will confound decent people trying to understand the world around them. That you have let this happen, and it now appears to have been fully deliberate, is an unforgivable offense. Accordingly, I will never forgive or forget what you have done to Christina, to those of us who care about her, and to those who might have liked to know the truth about her.”

Gingrich Breaks His Silence

SO WHY didn’t Gingrich and his staff support her? Did they in fact come to believe the charges? Gingrich himself was uncharacteristically mute during the crucial hours when Mrs. Jeffrey was hung out to dry. She was abandoned without a consoling word to her or an exonerating word to the public.

Finally speaking on the issue after three months, Mr. Gingrich readily concedes that Mrs. Jeffrey is neither an anti-Semite nor a racist. “As time goes on,” he says, “and as people get to see and hear her on talk shows, read her op-eds, and get to encounter her as a person, they’ll realize that there’s an enormous gap between the engaging and intelligent woman that they’re now seeing, and this caricature that the Left has tried to create.”

Gingrich explains his decision to fire her this way: “She made in what should have been a confidential document a deliberate hyperbole to drive home a point about a program which many people agree was biased and prejudiced. However, taken out of context, that hyperbole was so unsustainable that the amount of effort we could have put into explaining it would have been drowned by the efforts of the Left, who at that moment were desperately seeking some way to destroy my speakership and stop the momentum of the House Republicans.

“Christina saw herself under attack, and she wanted her friends to stand up for her, and that’s legitimate on her part. But at the same time, she had never been through what a Washington firestorm is like once the full mechanisms of the Left are engaged. I don’t think she had any sense of just how vicious it could get.

“Now, our consideration was two-fold. First, in the end, was she likely to survive? And our feeling was, no. Second, we were likely to use so much capital over a job that, historically, either had not existed or had not been noticed. And it would have absurdly slowed down the momentum of the Contract [with America]. So as a practical matter, I wanted her to back out before she got smeared so bitterly, because she could never have recovered. Frankly, one of the most bitter decisions I had to make in the first months of the 104th Congress was this one.”

Mrs. Jeffrey, who is writing a book about her experience, understands the reasoning but disagrees. “All it would have taken would have been the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish people coming forward and setting Newt straight,” she says. “Then the Democrats would have had to back off. Nobody would have believed them. You can always back down. But how long can you do that?”

It may well be that, after the savage attack on Mrs. Jeffrey’s character, saving her job would have burned precious political fuel. Nonetheless, why was no effort made to explore the validity of the allegations against her and, if they proved unfounded, to try to clear her name before she returned home? After all, the professional and personal reputation of a friend was involved. Shallow spadework would have revealed both the honest misunderstandings and the political posturing behind the charges. Instead, Gingrich was silent, and Blankley exacerbated suspicions about Gingrich’s loyalty by speaking dismissively of Mrs. Jeffrey to reporters. Asked recently by Roll Call whether the Historian’s position would soon be filled, he said he didn’t know, adding, “I’m just glad that the other one is gone.” Mr. Blankley did not return my calls.

Human Events reported that Gingrich’s action had “appalled many conservatives who feel he needlessly — and brutally — mistreated a woman who has been a stout friend and supporter.” It quoted an anonymous Republican staffer who sounded the same note: “Those conservatives who saw how easily Gingrich ditched Jeffrey have to wonder how loyal he’s going to be to his own troops.”

Before leaving Washington, Christina Jeffrey arranged what turned out to be a pleasant meeting with one of her detractors, Representative Schumer. By her account (Schumer’s office did not reply to repeated requests for an interview), the congressman said he recognized she was not an anti-Semite. “But,” he said, “your friends should have supported you.”