What do you think of the expected announcement of Newt Gingrich’s candidacy for president, which Lorraine talked about this morning in the news?
Honestly, that the Republicans have fallen pretty low and it is always possible to reinvent yourself on that side of the Atlantic.
In fact, we thought that we had finished with a man that was one of the most hated figures in American politics in recent history.
It was Gingrich who was the architect of the Republican wave that stormed Congress in 1994, after the first two years of Bill Clinton’s term in office. In a few months, however, the speaker of the House of Representatives had managed to turn everyone against him, even in the Republican camp.
A radical hard liner holding a discourse almost too far right, Gingrich was the sole architect of the government deadlock the two following years, in 1995 and 1996. His famous “Contract for America,” which mainly focused on minimizing the role of the federal government, was a crushing failure.
In 1996, when Clinton was triumphantly reelected despite the turmoil of the Lewinsky affair — the height of hypocrisy, as Gingrich was the one who led the impeachment battle while he cheated on his wife — the defeat was attributed by all of the Republicans to Newt. After a new Republican decline in Congress in 1998, he had only to leave politics by the back door.
But Gingrich was able to recuperate — or almost — thanks to the eruption of the tea party these last two years. Obsessed with minimizing the government and reducing deficits, the movement made the former speaker one of its icons. So, we began to see Newt a little more often on Fox News, not as a consultant this time, but as a politician thinking about running in 2012.
He pretended to reinvent himself by apparently discovering his Catholic faith thanks to his ex-mistress who became his new wife. But, above all, he was noted for his blunders concerning Barack Obama’s nationality, whom he once accused of having “anti-colonial” and “anti-American” views inherited from his “Kenyan and socialist father”…
Admittedly Gingrich is not the first candidate to run in the Republican camp, which is composed of several key figures a little less interesting (besides Trump or Palin, obviously). But in place of Barack Obama today, we would not be that worried for 2012.
We surrender Fabrice.