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And Gingrich Begot Trump [1]

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Date: 2022-08-04

Spawner and Spawn

Dana Milbank has a devastating column in this morning’s WaPo: The GOP is sick. It didn’t start with Trump — and won’t end with him. He details the history of the past quarter-century of GOP lies and machinations, driven largely by Newt Gingrich when he replaced Bob Michel as the House GOP leader (and Speaker).

Newt Gingrich had almost nothing in common with the man he shoved aside. Michel was a portrait of civility and decency, a World War II combat veteran who knew that his political opponents were not his enemies and that politics was the art of compromise. Gingrich, by contrast, rose to prominence by forcing the resignation of a Democratic speaker of the House on what began as mostly false allegations, by smearing another Democratic speaker with personal innuendo, and by routinely thwarting Michel’s attempts to negotiate with Democrats. Gingrich had avoided service in Vietnam and regarded Democrats as the enemy, impugning their patriotism and otherwise savaging them nightly on the House floor for the benefit of C-SPAN viewers.

Note some of the characteristics here:

Use of personal innuendo and false accusations

Avoiding military service

Calling political opponents the “enemy”

Blocking negotiations that are the heart of normal politics

Milbank continues:

The problem is that one of our two major political parties has ceased good-faith participation in the democratic process. Of course, there are instances of violence, disinformation, racism and corruption among Democrats and the political left, but the scale isn’t at all comparable. Only one party fomented a bloody insurrection and even after that voted in large numbers (139 House Republicans, a two-thirds majority) to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Only one party promotes a web of conspiracy theories in place of facts. Only one party is trying to restrict voting and discredit elections. Only one party is stoking fear of minorities and immigrants.

(Yes, a touch of both-siderism. Still, Milbank brings it up mainly to discredit it.)

So in addition to the list above, add these:

Appeals to racism

Stoking fear — of immigrants, of POC, of women, gays and other sexual minorities, of liberals, etc, etc, etc.

Gingrich actually didn’t start this; Nixon did, with his Southern Strategy (Milbank gives a nod to Nixon, though less than he should). It continued with Reagan (whom Milbank didn’t mention) and his use of “welfare queens” and other bugaboos. Still, it was Gingrich who made it OK to speak openly.

Now Gingrich begot Bush pere et fils (mostly fils), who begot Palin, who begot Trump. (I may have left out a few generations.) Fair use (not to mention limits of space) prevent me from listing all the ethical and legal crimes the GOP committed in the years before Trump, but I can at least list the headings:

Long before Trump promulgated more than 30,000 falsehoods during his presidency, including disinformation about the covid-19 pandemic that contributed to countless deaths

Long before Trump spoke of immigrants as rapists and murderers coming from “shithole countries” and told Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to other countries

Long before Trump told the violent Proud Boys to “stand by” instead of condemning them

Long before Trump discredited democratic institutions with his “big lie” about election fraud

Long before the dysfunction of the Trump era

In other words, Trump embodies today’s GOP.

It is crucial to understand that Donald Trump didn’t create this noxious environment. He isn’t some hideous, orange Venus emerging from the half-shell. Rather, he is a brilliant opportunist; he saw the direction the Republican Party was taking and the appetites it was stoking. The onetime pro-choice advocate of universal health care reinvented himself to give Republicans what they wanted. Because Trump is merely a reflection of the sickness in the GOP, the problem won’t go away when he does.

Trump didn’t create today’s GOP; he stole it and then stoked it. Milbank doesn’t go into the “stolen” part, but it’s clear the GOP plot didn’t plan for Trump and didn’t know what to do with him when he burst (in the sense of a pustule bursting) on the scene. They initially opposed him not because they disagreed with him, but they thought he was too blunt where they still thought being more subtle would win them more elections. Trump showed them that being blunt, being crude, being a bully, being open about racism, sexism, misogyny, can be an asset in an election.

The GOP was also leery of Trump because — as events proved — he has no idea how to govern, no interest in governing, and no goals other than gratifying his ego and his wallet (and in staying out of jail). Many GOP leaders have the same goals — but they also understand they still need to run the country just efficiently enough to keep them in power and money.

In this respect as well, Trump is Gingrich’s true offspring. Gingrich had no interest in running the country well — recall that he once shut down the government in a fit of Trumpesque pique because he’d had to exit from the rear of Air Force One. Also, that he engineered a ridiculous impeachment because Clinton got caught lying about sex (duh!) — and then got caught himself cheating on his wife while she was recovering from cancer. Gingrich at least lost his job over that. Trump got away with it.

Against that quarter-century of ruin, what we are living through today is just a continuation of the GOP’s direction for the past 30 years: the appeals to white nationalism, the sabotage of the functions of government, the routine embrace of disinformation, stoking the fiction of election fraud and the “big lie,” and the steady degradation of democracy. Now, it seems, that degradation is accelerating.

Trump was and continues to be the accelerant. Even when he leaves the scene, he leaves behind a crop of GOP leaders like DeSantis, Hawley, Abbott, who have studied his success and are determined to expand on it.

If we have occasional bipartisan victories, it is only because a few pragmatists like McConnell see them as a tactic to regain and keep power, not because they believe in what those victories mean for the American people.

Nixon, Reagan, GIngrich, Palin, Trump. The downward slope continues with Cruz, Hawley, DeSantis, and the crop of election deniers who are winning Republican primaries. The cancer that is the GOP has metastasized beyond hope.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/4/2114488/-And-Gingrich-Begot-Trump

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