Back in the 1980's, when Newt was riding high on the brow of the new, Reaganaut wave of conservatism, Rolling Stone (of all media creatures) reminded us that Newt's first foray into federal politics was to run for Congress in the late Larry McDonald's old Georgia district (based around Marietta, Smyrna, and suburban northwest Atlanta and Cobb County, Georgia -- I lived there at the time).
Incumbent Rep. McDonald, who had been killed by the Soviets in the KAL-007 airliner shootdown near Sakhalin Island that was such a cause notorious, was probably the most conservative member of the Congress, and Rolling Stone had pilloried him in its pages, depicting him as an SS officer in full black-uniform regalia ..... dripping urine from an open fly (they used to think stuff like that is avante-garde and proof positive of their own kewlness and fearlessness in political judgment).
Some of the candidates who ran to succeed McDonald were very conservative, RS reminded us, and won -- whereas Newt, in his very first congressional campaign, ran as a "kinder, gentler" Bushoid "Rockefeller Republican" (the conservative term of art for which, back in the 50's and 60's, was a "Me-Too'er"). And lost.
In later campaigns for that Georgia district's seat, Newt took the lesson and ran as a values conservative, but Rolling Stone's point was, he came to that position by political education, not as his first or basic inclination.
Which is what you said.
Thanks!