Newt and the Imperiling of the Good Ship SS Reagan

 The case against Mitt is altogether clear and need not be repeated here except to say that he is the conservative of convenience, whose moderate to liberal views are explicit in any number of interviews and campaign ads from the recent past, and who continues to embrace a government-run healthcare program and individual mandate.

The case against Newt is much more complex, but equally damning. He, more than any other candidate, sells himself as the Reagan conservative. In nearly every debate, he touts himself as Reagan’s longtime fellow soldier and the heir to carry the Reagan torch. This song appeals to conservatives, and every time Newt sings it, he picks up a few more supporters. Clearly, the Reagan song sells.

It is precisely Newt’s claim to wear the Reagan mantle that imperils the good ship SS Reagan and our conservative movement. There are three issues which puts our ship in peril if we put Newt at the helm.

All Over the Place

First, although Newt has done much to advance the conservative agenda, his conservatism is more characteristically erratic. He has been wrong on the four key issues of conservatism during the Obama administration: 1) global warming/cap and trade; 2) illegal immigration; 3) the bailouts and the porkulus; and 4) government mandates for healthcare. The more time that passes from the era of Reagan, the further that Newt drifts from Reagan conservatism, and the more Newt seems to affirm that the era of Reagan is over. This is why Newt and Mitt debate over minuscule issues which hardly differentiate themselves from each other—they are so much alike, and in these squabbles, Newt reinforces the notion that he is more of a Rockefeller Republican than a Reagan Republican.

The Future is the Past

Secondly, Newt is prone to self-implosion. Part of this is a matter of him not being a principled leader, and all that is entailed therein. Nowhere is this better seen than in Newt’s time as Speaker of the House. Within two years of his coming to the Speakership, it was conservatives in his own party that led a coup against him. This cannot be explained as a reaction to Newt shaking up the establishment. Those were our own conservatives who weighed Newt’s leadership and found him seriously wanting, and they did so even before the ethics charges were made.

Under this rubric of Newt’s failure in principled leadership is that he drew lines in the sand, making tough stands on conservative issues, and exposing us to considerable liability. This could have been good, but when the moment of victory was at hand, Newt would blink. This hurt our movement time and again by saddling us with all the liability of taking a tough stance without achieving any of the benefits of victory. Whenever Newt stood toe to toe with Clinton on high stakes issues, Newt blinked, whether it was the impeachment trial or shutting down the government. After the shutting down of the government, Newt was more or less a whipped pup whenever he needed to make a stand against Clinton. Within two years, Newt’s favorability ratings tanked at 13%, which probably is still the record low for any congressman—and this plagues his polling to this day.

Newt took the Republican caucus down with him. Newt likes to spin his record as one that retained a Republican majority. This is a faux claim of victory. The reality is that, due to the House Bank Scandal and Clinton’s overplaying of his hand in implementing his leftward agenda, a huge Republican majority was swept into office in 1994. This majority was expected to increase significantly in 1998’s “six year itch” of the election cycle in which the incumbent president’s party usually loses seats in Congress in his sixth year in office. This expectation was especially high for Republicans since it came near the height of the Lewinsky scandal. Instead, Republicans lost a large number of seats and just barely held on to their majority. We suffered in the Senate as well, trading long time Republicans Al D’Amato and Lauch Faircloth for liberals Chuck Shumer and John Edwards. Freshmen and sophomore Republicans who had the potential of becoming longterm incumbents and preventing the Pelosi takeover in 2008 were sent home in defeat. Newt’s poor leadership in 1998 set up not only the Pelosi victory in 2008, but Obamacare in 2009.

Seeing that he lost the confidence of his own caucus, not to mention the ethics charges, Newt resigned, and it was clearly a resignation of disgrace from which one could recover only by a combination of forgetting and rewriting history.

As Speaker, Newt gained a well-deserved reputation of being unfocused, undisciplined, erratic, volatile, unaccountable, unresponsive, and incapable of nurturing important initiatives to fruition. These flaws have all been seen at one point or another in his current campaign, including this week’s promise to have a permanent moon base by the end of his second term, and his failure to congratulate Romney in his concession speech. One can hardly repress the expectation that Newt will self-destruct even prior to the convention, let alone under the pressure of a protracted campaign against Obama, or under the pressure of his own presidency. The problem with self-destruction is that it also causes massive collateral damage—the lifeblood of the conservative movement would be sucked out by our own nominee who did the same thing back in the mid 90s.

Much more could be said about Newt’s failed leadership during his brief tenure as Speaker, but there is a third issue which puts our ship in peril if Newt is at the helm.

Withering on the Vine under Fire

Let us assume that Newt manages to secure the Republican nomination. This will put him toe to toe to Obama. One wonders how Newt might stand in high stakes situations with Obama when he did not fare well in similar situations with Bill Clinton. Moreover, of the Republican candidates, Newt is the most vulnerable to attack from the Democrats. If Newt can so easily be beaten by Mitt’s negative ads, how much easier will it be for Democrats to do the same. Democrats will have enough money to air nationwide commercials daily, and Newt will give them a new topic for attack every day.

Thus, if Newt becomes the nominee, all our energy will be diverted from advocating and defending our conservative agenda, and allocated instead for an all out attempt to protect Newt. In an election when Obama should be the issue, Newt will become the issue. Frankly, there are enough bags in Newt’s entourage of baggage to dominate the daily news cycle for the rest of the year. Anything from check kiting in the House Banking Scandal, to his serial adultery and 3 marriages, to hypocrisy in pressing the Clinton impeachment “over sex,” to lobbying, and to his attacks on capitalism, we will be so busy this fall circling the wagons to protect Newt that we will not be able to mount an effective offensive against Obama.

Neither Newt nor Mitt: Both are Equally Flawed

These three problems with Newt nomination make it impossible for Santorum supporters to vote for Newt in the remaining primaries. If Santorum were suddenly whisked away by aliens so that his supporters could not vote for him, they would be left in a lurch. In this year of the conservative when, of all elections, we need to elect a conservative, we simply cannot stomach voting for Mitt the moderate. But at the same time, even if we assume that Newt is more committed to conservative core values than Mitt (which is an altogether uncertain assumption), we hesitate to hand over the helm to him, for his persona is likely to hit critical mass as to implode like a black hole, taking the whole conservative movement and the SS Reagan with it.

The Uncompromised Candidate

However, I fear that if Newt is the nominee, his negatives will be so high that there won’t be much of a contest in the general election, and the good ship SS Reagan will languish at sea while this American land is ravished by Hurricane Barack. Remember, as Rush said this week, “I have to remind you, again, that Gingrich debated John Kerry on Global Warming at one point and they agreed on practically every point. Nobody is innocent. Everybody is guilty of some transgression somewhere against Conservatism (suspenseful pause) except Santorum.”