I agree that Newt is a fantastic history professor and lecturer, but his debating skill is grossly overrated. He famously debated Clinton and folded.
Then he debated Kerry, and folded too.
Remember "Green Conservatism?"
I agree that Newt is a fantastic history professor and lecturer, but his debating skill is grossly overrated. He famously debated Clinton and folded.
Then he debated Kerry, and folded too.
Remember "Green Conservatism?"
[Gingrich]'s debating skill is grossly overrated. He famously debated Clinton and folded . . . Then he debated Kerry, and folded too.His debating skills aren't the only thing about Newt Gingrich that have been overrated over the years. His should-be-former image as an aspiring government cutter remains remarkably overrated.
A brief revival of small-government conservatism occurred with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, but those advances gradually slipped away in the absence of a leader firmly committed to small government in the Reagan-Goldwater mode . . . The only truly compelling Congressional leader of this period was Newt Gingrich, but . . . he was not truly ideologically committed to cutting the size of government . . .One wishes that book had been made required reading for anyone stepping into the primary booths in 2008.According to (Alvin and Heidi Toffler in The Third Wave) . . . the third wave is the postindustrial society, built around information and technology. The Tofflers warned that the new age required new institutions of governance.
No one embraced this idea with more enthusiasm than House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican takeover of (Congress) in 1994. Gingrich referred to The Third Wave as "the seminal work of our time." He made the book mandatory reading for newly-elected Republicans. This book says the U.S. Constitution "is increasingly obsolete, and hence increasingly, if inadvertently, oppressive and dangerous to our welfare." Therefore, it should "die and be replaced."
Gingrich is almost universally associated with opposition to big government. But that was not actually the case. Gingrich rhetorically criticised big government. And it served his enemies and the Clinton administration to portray Gingrich as slashing government programs. The Gingrich-inspired "Contract With America" was generally seen as a call for smaller government, although it did not actually call for cutting a single government program. (The closest it came was a call for zero-baseline budgeting.)
Actually, Gingrich opposed bureaucratic goverment---inefficient government---not big government per se. As Gingrich said in 1994, "government plays a huge role" in society and "anybody who believes in the American Constitution ought to believe in a fairly strong government." He went on to say that he has "no particular beef with big government." Or, as he said more recently, if the bureaucracies can be reformed and made more efficient, "the country could get excited about the opportunity to make government work."
(Emphases added.---BD.)
---Michael D. Tanner, from Leviathan on the Right: How Big Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. (2007)