[tom h]

This guy is pathetic. Hate started long before Gingrich. Ronald Reagan was the first Republican President that elicited visceral hate from Democrats. Before that, Presidents were always viewed respectfully by the opposition. But Democrats could not believe that Reagan won, and carried Republicans into office at the same time. Why do you think that Democrats across the nation cheered when Hinckley shot him? I have two documented instances of that -- one at Columbia University, where a class of students and their professor all cheered wildly when someone breathlessly entered and (mistakenly) shouted that Reagan had been assassinated!

I also recall the Patricia Schroeder hated Reagan for years. Called him the Teflon President; called him a moron; etc.

Claiming that the hate started with Gingrich is outright wrong.

[eddie willers]

Ronald Reagan was the first Republican President that elicited visceral hate from Democrats.

You must be too young to remember Nixon.
And they started in on him in the fifties.

[driftless]

Libs are afraid to look in the mirror at their own ugly, hate-filled image. You only have to go over to DU to see what extreme hate looks like. That also makes them stinking hypocrites as they perpetually tout themselves as people of good will. Bah!

[litany_of_lies]

Mr. Traub must think we have no memory.

I officially gave up on the possibility of constructive engagement with the left when Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter appeared on 60 minutes in 1985 just before Reagan's second inauguration and told us that Reagan had (paraphrasing) "made it OK to hate and to be a racist again."

Ann Coulter's latest book documents vicious liberal hate going back at least to Alger Hiss, and coming from Harry Truman WHILE he was President.

The thing that drives the left crazy about Newt, and why the Left has turned it up a few notches, especially in the past few years, is that Newt, for all his considerable faults, is indeed the guy who changed the balance of power in Washington, and at least as far as Congress is concerned, it has never changed back.

We are still benefitting from the Republican landslide in 1994. No 1994, no George W. Bush.