Posted on 03/15/2007 6:29:56 AM PDT by Alter Kaker
Newt Gingrich's attempted phoenix-like rise from his own political ashes to a presidential candidacy next week will run into a harsh assessment by his former House Republican colleague, Tom DeLay. The former majority leader's memoir assails Gingrich as an "ineffective" House speaker with a flawed moral compass.
Gingrich is not the only erstwhile political ally to feel DeLay's wrath. In No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight, DeLay is even more critical of his predecessor as majority leader, Dick Armey, and assails President Bush for being more compassionate than conservative. Even DeLay's handpicked speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, is accused along with Gingrich and Armey of opening the door to the Democratic purge of him.
DeLay is an angry man after being driven from the leadership, from Congress and, so far, from public life by "a concerted effort to destroy me legally, financially and personally" through a 2005 indictment in Texas. DeLay's response to Democratic District Attorney Ronnie Earle is familiar. What is unusual are his claims that "pre-existing tensions I had with Gingrich and Armey" partially explain their role in kicking DeLay out of the leadership.
DeLay admits that the team of Speaker Gingrich, Majority Leader Armey and Majority Whip DeLay, empowered by the 1994 elections, "were not a cohesive team, and this hindered our ability to change the nation." He puts most blame "at Newt Gingrich's door." DeLay writes: "He knew nothing about running meetings and nothing about driving an agenda." He adds: "Nearly every other day he had a new agenda, a new direction he wanted us to take. It was impossible to follow him."
DeLay also declares "our leadership was in no moral shape to press" impeachment against President Bill Clinton. Writing well before Gingrich's admission for the first time last week, DeLay asserts: "It is now public knowledge that Newt Gingrich was having an affair with a staffer during the entire impeachment crisis."
DeLay refers to Armey as "so blinded by ambition as to be useless to the cause," a "poor leader" who had "few fresh ideas." He adds that Armey "resented anyone he thought might get in the way of his becoming speaker of the House. Beware the man drunk with ambition." His version of the failed 1997 coup attempt against Gingrich pleads innocence and accuses Armey, after realizing he would not succeed Gingrich, of telling the speaker that DeLay was plotting against him: "He had lied to cover his ambitions, betraying both his movement and his fellow leaders."
DeLay is angry that, under Democratic and news media pressure, Republicans retreated from a rule that an indicted House Republican need not resign from the leadership if indicted in a politically motivated prosecution. Gingrich and Armey (both out of Congress) opposed that rule. More significantly, to DeLay's dismay, so did his former lieutenant, Hastert.
The memoir ends DeLay's reticence in criticizing Bush. Deriding Bush's self-identification as "a compassionate conservative," DeLay asserts "he has expanded government to suit his purpose, especially in the area of education. He may be compassionate, but he is certainly no conservative in the classic sense."
DeLay has been a subject of controversy on the right. When American Conservative Union chairman David Keene attempted to make DeLay the organization's Washington operative, four members of his board resigned. Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a leading conservative reformer, describes DeLay's leadership as concentrating on redistricting, fund-raising and distribution of pork.
Notwithstanding Flake's criticisms, DeLay was the most conservative congressional leader I have witnessed in 50 years covering Capitol Hill. I rate him with Lyndon B. Johnson as a dominant legislator. But his revelation that GOP leaders did not constitute a band of brothers helps explain why 12 years of control produced much less than was anticipated.
Correction: Monday's column incorrectly identified the bill that Barry Goldwater voted against in 1964 as the Voting Rights Act, when it actually was called the Civil Rights Act.
I like all three guys, but there is a lesson in this story.
DeLay ran a business before entering Congress. Newt and Dick Armey were college professors with Ph.D.'s. (Newt in History, Armey in Economics). Both Armey and Newt had excellent ideas and were influential orators. DeLay was the kind of practical guy who just gets things done. Of course there were conflicts.
This example points to the need for conservatives to put their egos aside and work together. Some of the posts about different '08 candidates reek of egotism and a lesser concern for the immediate fate of the country. If we bicker for reasons of personal vanity, then we will get what we deserve in '08.
Gingrich / DeLay in '08.........
You never, ever see democrats wailing at one another in public.
The Democratics only public in-fighting is what date to set for the Iraqi Insurgent Victory.
It's easy. When you win, everybody gets along. When the chips are down, the knives come out.
Dick Armey is now with the ACLU!! I like ALL these men.....but I wish they would STFU.
"Dick Armey is now with the ACLU!!"
Have you got a link to an article with that? I will lose all respect for Armey if he links up with those marxists.
LOL. This article suggests that your Gingrich/Delay ticket has all the staying power of, say, a Van Halen tour.
No link...look it up...Bob Barr and Dick Armey both went to the ACLU!
I have lost respect for both Barr and Armey. Why would they join the enemy? Maybe did not join the ACLU, but consulting? No difference IMHO.
He is one of the former so-called "conservatives" from the 1994 revolution......a man that I long considered to be smarmy, weak-spined, untrustworthy, devious.......plus all hat, no cattle.
I've never changed that opinion in all these years. So I was not at all surprised when the money called and he went to work for the ACLU along with Barr.
Leni
With business management experience, I think DeLay would make the better Chief Executive. He is also very tough minded. Newt is an intellectual not a manager.
However, that ticket would drive the MSM into a frenzy. Those two guys would be tarred and smeared in a manner that makes the Goldwater run and the Bork hearings seem tame in comparison.
I suspect DeLay would probably not be the strongest GOP candidate in 2008. Just a hunch.
IMO, both Bob Barr and Dick Armey are the polar opposites of Marxists. They are libertarians when it comes to economics and government power.
I suspect there is a nexus of similar interests with the ACLU, but I am also disappointed that they are sleeping with the enemy.
"They are libertarians"
Frankly, no libertarian should have anything to do with the ACLU as it is now. They are anti freedom.
Didn't Delay say, 'there was no fat left in the federal gov' or something like that?
DeLay might be going to jail and Newt might run for President...who's smarter?
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