He's almost solely responsible for creating the binary political divide that started all this in the 90s. It doesn't surprise me that he would crawl out of his evil den.
He was the Speaker of the House in the '90s and basically wrote the playbook for why American politics is so aggressively divided today. Before him, the two parties in Congress generally tried to compromise, but he flipped the script by treating politics like an all-out moral war. He famously sent out memos instructing Republicans to stop talking about policy differences and start attacking Democrats personally using words like "corrupt," "sick," and "pathetic." By using live television broadcasts to blast these angry attacks straight to voters at home, he eventually helped Republicans win control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, kicking off the era of brutal gridlock and government shutdowns we're still stuck with now.
He also spearheaded the Clinton impeachment over the blow job while Newt was cheating on his wife who was in the hospital for cancer. He was reprimanded for lying to the house ethics committee (84 ethics charges) for his use of using tax exempt education foundations for hyper partisan political goals (fake right wing college courses) which made him the 1st speaker in history disciplined for ethical wrong doing, he ultimately resigned in disgrace
This depends on how you define "involved in politics"
He's been aggressively involved in politics "from the outside"—as in, he hasn't held office (the point I believe you're making), but he's absolutely been present in political commentating, consulting, publishing, and the like
Worth noting that after Newt resigned they replaced him with Dennis Hastert. Dennis Hastert was also shouting about family values and pretending to be morally outraged, but instead of cheating on his wife he was raping children.
Clinton lied under oath and witness tampered - if my memory is accurate. The lack of prosecution against Clinton continued the system that enabled Trump's immunity.
It was a witchhunt investigation into his real estate dealings his private relationship had nothing to do with it he lied about having his dick sucked vs Trumps investigation into collusion with a foreign power where investigators weren't allowed to even look at his finances. It's more double standards bullshit from Republicans
He's also famous for making tapes that every republican listened to that basically taught them how to disguise one issue as another, really he's the father of organized American propaganda.
He also started and spread the idea of not moving into "commie areas" and having to live amongst evil Democrats, creating an actual harder land divide between parties as well. He is responsible for the "evil" "commie" "dirty" tags being applied to a political party.
It wasn’t just him… there were Reagan-era think tanks involved that paved the way, the death of the fairness doctrine (which enabled the birth of Fox propaganda, and other morally-bankrupt strategists like Roger Stone that were cutthroat cheaters, and regulatory capture, and Supreme Court decisions (e.g., citizens united) that made corporations = people so that they could use copious amounts of money to sway elections, and then social media—which had honest-ish beginnings but the CEOs learned that they could actively contribute to the downfall of democracy in order to rise as de facto rulers of the country. I could continue, but Gingrich was just a small shit stain on the way to full-blown oligarchy/plutocracy.
He also told Republicans to stop calling their opponents “democrats” and instead call them “liberals.” He almost singlehandedly turned “liberal” into a dirty word among voters, and it still works today.
This is kind of a random smaller thing, but I'll also add for u/dark_bits that George Lucas named the cowardly Trade Federation villain from Star Wars Episode 1 "Nute Gunray" after Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan (Reagan >< Gan-rea). So, the kind of person you would name a cartoonish villain after.
And this is why Parks & Rec having him on as a guest playing himself made me want to tear my eyes out. Completely flipped my opinion of the show. Just pure trash.
The jist of it is that he was speaker of the house from 95 to 99 and started the policy of "compromise is surrender." If the Republicans were outnumbered in votes, they would refuse to alter position until they got their way.
He also would regularly encourage his conservative peers to stop referring to opponents with respect and instead use evocative, emotional language and to describe opponents in terms of good and evil. Then he took these binary behaviors into TV and began platforming a stark divide between the political parties in an effort to paint votes as "all or nothing." Either you voted red 100% of the time, or you were a blood enemy.
American politicians used to be VERY different. Basically, the entire polarized, marketed approach to appeal to emotion and religion to create tribalized voting started because of him. People like Rush Limbaugh or Bob Grant didn't help, as they were the Joe Rogan's of their day.
Although really, all of that began specifically because Reagan got rid of the FCC Fairness Doctrine, back in 1987. No one had to fairly present leveraged, informed opinions anymore, so that created a new type of hyper polarized "news" that appealed primarily to appealing to people's desire to be right, not informed. It's similar to how online infospheres don't look for nuance, only blame, because their audience wants the emotional applause and validation that they're in the right. (American culture.)
Around the 80's there were two people to note: Grover Norquist (in charge of then president Reagan's Americans for Tax Reform) and Newt Gingrinch, a representative and America's former speaker of the house.
For context, America has three branches of government. Executive (the president, his agencies, who enforce the law), the Judicial (who review the law and make sure they're allowed to be enforced) and the Legislative (two houses, the senate and congress, full of representatives from each state who write the laws. President approves and enforces those once both houses pass the law).
What makes things difficult in the USA is that we have two parties, the Democrats (socially liberal, generally for larger government oversight and intervention) and the Republicans (socially conservative, generally for lesser government and lesser regulation).
Alright, the answer. Norquist and Gingrich worked on a framework for the modern American Republican party. The idea was simple. Hold the line. If all the republican congressmen and people all just agreed to not let the Democrats do anything and voted together on everything, they would hold the power. They would prove Democrats incompetent and themselves the answer. In fact, they didn't even have to have an answer. They could just point to the other people, show they sucked, and because they were the only other party in town, they would get votes. Rather than work together to solve the issues at hand and compromise in ways that can keep the country moving forward, they held the line.
They didn't have to lead effectively, have good ideas, or properly govern. They just had to make sure the other side didn't.
It's part of the reason American politics are so divisive today.
And it worked on many occasions. We made several attempts to have universal health care in this country. Our former democratic president Barack Obama tried to pass a republican-created version of health care (Obamacare was basically Romney Care) during his term. The Republicans held the line. A few democrats who would be open to discussion and ideas voted with them, effectively kicking ourselves in the dong with being able to get the health care change this country needs. We know some version of universal or single payer health care will increase the quality of life for people at a lower cost to people overall. But it wasn't about that. It was about the Republicans stopping the Democrats. That's it.
The problem to this is that the Democrats are still trying to play fair and don't have the fighting chance against a disingenuous party.
The Republicans aren't. The "hold the line" mentality is dangerous because the Republicans are not the most popular ideologically in this country. So in order to stay in power, they have to do what they can. Lie to people. Gerrymander seats so districts turn up republican in voting. Making it harder for people to vote.
In order to hold this line, they have to also just basically agree to do so with everyone. With that, imagine if you and your family agreed to do every rule each one of you said and never held each other accountable. Bedtime at 11 from dad. Great! Clean up after dinner. Great! Everyone has to dress up like a dinosaur at all time from the two year old son. Well, guess everyone's going to work like a dinosaur.
Republicans found themselves letting the more extreme sides of their party get the voice. The Tea Party was a movement from the most right-leaning individuals who started getting their agendas, no matter how crazy, forward. Extreme candidates started basically just not giving a fuck and using media to get attention for themselves. Candidates like Trump took advantage of this. The republicans all got on board when it was clear he was getting popular.
And here we are today. With a fully republican-controlled government, our president has avoided jail, earned billions, openly just said he'd give people taxpayer money to vote republican, our congress barely does anything other than pass handouts to corporations, our protective agencies like the FDA are being destroyed from within and we're having food safety outbreaks like every week. The people who think the government should do absolutely nothing but make it easy for business people to make money, build a christian nation, and to fight wars are in charge. And we've been incredibly divided.
All because two men decided one party shouldn't play fair and win power at all costs. That cost was at the expense of the American public.
To add a bit more context than what others have stated:
C-Span is an American cable and satellite television network that televises proceedings of the United States federal government. While it's nice to have the public able to view such proceedings for transparency purposes, it's not that entertaining. For years and years it was a boring station few people watched.
Newt's novel idea was to use C-Span to court the crazies. He knew that after hours, nothing was on TV except infomercials and C-Span. If he went to congress and just ranted and raved about whatever, he'd capture the attention of a good chunk of anyone flipping through the channels at that hour.
Being up at that hour doesn't mean you're crazy, but at good portion of people who are up that late aren't happy with the way their life is going. Newt offered those people boogiemen to direct their ire at. Someone to blame for their life not going the way they planned. His plan went surprisingly well.
Others have answered so I'll give a slightly different take: Newt is an atrocious human being, but he was really just taking advantage of preexisting conditions, and if not him it would have inevitably been someone else. The fact is that the neoliberal policies of the 80s and 90s, which were championed by both parties, created a situation where large swaths of the country were economically left behind.
Newt and his successors took the anger this caused and redirected it at liberal cultural 'values,' to great effect. There's a famous quote by LBJ, one of the best American politicians of the 20th century: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Obviously he was referring to race, but it's a general principle that Newt took full advantage of.
I think it's hard for people to imagine how massive the disparity is between (pick any town in Mississippi) and something like San Diego or Boston. I disagree with their choices, but a lot of people in the US have every right to be pissed; they were sold a bill of goods for decades and now want to burn the whole thing down, and honestly having seen the living conditions of some of these places I don't blame them.
Hey now, don’t let Rush Limbaugh off the hook. Newt and Rush together polluted the minds of American conservatives and brought this shitty hyper partisan state into being.
I was gonna say it if no one else did. Rush is not referenced nearly enough when people talk about how we got here. Arguably he’s more to blame than even Newt.
Would argue that it mostly started after Raegan administration abolished the Fairness Doctrine within FCC in 1987. That gave rise to heavily biased media which gained viewership by covering heavily politicized topics.
Ironically all the conservative talk news started after the rules changed in 1987 (Rush Limbaugh started his show in 1988, Michael Savage started in 1994).
Before that, it was rare to find a media outlet that had a single bias and outlets that were heavily biased was seen as fringe political news.
Go read some excerpts from his book (idk if he has more than one, I saw at Barnes and noble and couldn’t resist a skim). He’s even more batshit crazy than you can imagine.
I’m gonna be honest it was a few years ago and I don’t remember, I figured he’s written a few. I remember a white cover, so looking online it could’ve been “beyond Biden” maybe.
940
u/iamofnohelp 18h ago
Newt still alive?