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Here’s my Cliff’s Notes version of the article...

Evans had the idea to make a list of the most influential people of the day in Washington, inveigle them to his studio, and take a quite personal black-and-white photo of each.

Photographer Evans selected only 19 members of the 435-member House of Representatives for his book featuring 139 people.

But there, selected as one of the 19, was Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich was part of the Reagan Revolution’s Murderers’ Row. And anybody who was in Washington in the day, much less in the Reagan White House or the 1984 Reagan re-election campaign (and I would make that particular cut of three), knew it.

Lewis began meeting with key members already elected to the Platform Committee.

One of the first? That would be young Congressman Newt Gingrich, already serving as a member of the Platform Committee’s executive committee. The meeting took place in Gingrich’s basement book-lined House office, a cramped affair reflecting precisely how junior in rank Gingrich actually was in the House pecking order. The three of us — Lewis, Gingrich, and myself — sat for over an hour talking about what Newt saw as the problems ahead.

The meeting was pure Newt Gingrich. Precisely the kind of talk that so struck the Republican voters of South Carolina the other day and has captured Gingrich such a following in the GOP debates. It was filled with polite if barely disguised disdain for the American Left in general, and what he would later refer to as “the old, passive and reactive Republican party.”

Specifically in focus was Gingrich’s fear that the Republican RINO/Establishment members on the Platform Committee — specifically this meant people like then-Kansas Senator Bob Dole (the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee)...would somehow try and moderate the Reagan Revolution with calls for tax increases or somehow lessening the Reagan demand for American military superiority over the Soviet Union.

Gingrich’s fears were realized in spades. All hell broke loose as Senator Dole — carrying the prestige of the chairmanship of the Senate’s tax writing committee — insisted on an open-ended plank on taxes that would accept a tax increase as a “last resort.”

Newt struck back. Hard. In private session — and public...Newt Gingrich raised holy hell.

Bob Dole, Newt snapped at one point, was nothing other than the “tax collector for the welfare state.”

Meanwhile, on the phone were all manner of people furious with Newt Gingrich.

Who was Newt Gingrich to be deciding on the tax prerogatives of the Treasury Secretary?

At the insistence of Gingrich and Kemp...a sentence that kept the door open for tax increases had a comma added to it after the word “taxes.”

The sentence now read subtly but considerably different: “We therefore oppose any attempts to increase taxes, which would harm the recovery and reverse the trend to restoring control of the economy to individual Americans.”

The Gingrich work product? Making certain that Ronald Reagan was not put on record leaving the door open for any more ill-fated tax increases. Dole was furious with the young Newt — and, it might be noted, recently made a point of endorsing Mitt Romney. Hmmmmm.

THE OTHER EXAMPLE of the kind of “work product” from Newt Gingrich that week was his opposition to Senator Warner’s insistence that the word “superiority” be stricken from the national security section of the platform — a word the Reaganites had insisted be in the 1980 platform.

Gingrich insisted on inserting language saying that the U.S. must be “stronger than any potential adversary.”

Is it any wonder the Washington Republican Establishment can’t stand Newt Gingrich?

Newt Gingrich was out there again and again and again for Ronald Reagan and conservative principles.

It was Newt Gingrich who came up with the idea in 1984 of using what were called “special orders” — a moment for House members at the end of the work day to stand in the well of the House and give speeches on the subject of their choice. With C-SPAN cameras newly present, Gingrich used these moments to launch a fusillade of attacks on liberals, enraging Speaker O’Neill...

The news was everywhere, and the Republican caucus of the day promptly gave Gingrich something South Carolinians did three times at the last two debates: a standing ovation.

It was Gingrich who boldly filed the ethics charges against the powerful Speaker Wright in 1988 — charges that eventually forced Wright to resign as Speaker in 1989. There are many who believe the ethics charges against Speaker Gingrich, charges Romney is now trying to use against Gingrich, were made up and sold to a Gingrich-hating media by livid congressional liberals as payback for both nailing Wright and humiliating O’Neill — not to mention Gingrich’s role in electing a GOP House for the first time in forty years. For Romney to be following this line gives the impression he can be easily taken in by both the liberal media and the anti-Newt Democrats and GOP Establishment.

Unlike Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich was not busy defensively claiming his independence and running from Reagan.

He never failed Ronald Reagan or the cause both believed in so passionately. Newt never wavered, and he always led. “Ronald Reagan is the only coherent revolutionary in an administration of accommodationist advisers,” Gingrich is quoted as saying in Steven F. Hayward’s The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980-1989.

in the narrowing choice between Gingrich and Mitt Romney, it is decidedly Gingrich whose “work product” as a card-carrying member of the Reagan Revolution is repeatedly marked with...The kind of contributions, the kind of vision and the kind of boldness that won him the respect and votes of South Carolina voters across the board.

...in one instance towards the end of the administration, Gingrich discussed complaints about things left undone. “Reagan put his arm around the young Georgia Congressman and said in his typically gentle fashion, ‘Well, some things you’re just going to have to do after I’m gone.’”

...some version of those gentle words from Ronald Reagan when he put his arm around a young Newt Gingrich is in fact driving the older Newt Gingrich in this campaign.

...quite unlike the picture Romney is trying to paint of his prime opponent in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich was very much present and accounted for on the Reagan team. To borrow from Reagan’s farewell address to the nation and the men and women who served him, Newt Gingrich wasn’t just marking time. He made a difference. He helped make that City on a Shining Hill stronger. He helped make the City freer.

Quite to the contrary of the Romney message, Newt Gingrich was in fact one of Reagan’s Young Lieutenants.

One of the best.