The Tea Party Is Probably Dead and Buried

Newt Gingrich’s resurrection from the political graveyard: The 68-year-old is suddenly the Republican front runner.

Last summer, Newt Gingrich had already been written off; now he’s the classic “comeback kid” and front runner among Republican candidates for the White House.

Newt Gingrich can smile once again. Self-deprecatingly, he tells stories from the political graveyard where he was after he had been written off. He tells of calling people for campaign contributions, only to be told they thought his campaign was already dead. Four months later, Gingrich enjoys a blossoming rebirth. Current opinion polls show him as the number one pick of conservatives in 2012. One could say this is the triumph of the Republican establishment over the tea party rebels.

First, Michele Bachmann, the radical fighter, was in vogue. Then came Rick Perry, the staunch governor of Texas. Following him was pizza mogul Herman Cain. Now Gingrich, the epitome of old school politicians, has become the best hope of that faction of the Republican Party that misses the traditional conservative barnyard smell and operates under the motto “Anybody But Romney.”

It’s a comeback reminiscent of John McCain. He had also struck his colors four years earlier but then ended up being the standard bearer against Barack Obama. Except Gingrich’s wagon is stuck more deeply in the mud: June saw his campaign advisers resign en masse because Newt preferred sailing in the Greek islands to shaking hands with American farmers. But his turnaround came with the Republican debates, where his performance convinced a dubious party base that he did, indeed, have what it takes to sit in the Oval Office.

The 68-year-old with snow-white hair cultivates the image of being the Harvard professor of the Grand Old Party. He likes to season his speeches with historical parables that sometimes come off as wisdom, other times as patronizing, and occasionally as just plain poisonous.

“Contract with America”

Before his departure from Congress 12 years ago, he was one of Washington’s movers and shakers. In 1994, he stood before a map of the United States and proposed his “Contract with America”: No more budget deficits, and lawmakers would have to live by the same laws they recommended for everyone else. That promptly resulted in the Republicans taking control of the House back from Clinton’s Democrats. Gingrich’s stroke of genius speech made the Georgia back-bencher leader of the Republican Party. But he over-reached on the budget issue, causing a week-long government shutdown, thereby turning his triumph into a Pyrrhic victory.

It’s a legacy that still weighs heavily on him. Centrists in the United States still long for bipartisan consensus to solve the nation’s problems. Gingrich, on the other hand, proposes radical cures for the government to save $500 billion. Nevertheless, he took on a consultant’s role for the huge mortgage bank Freddie Mac, for which he was paid $1.8 million. Small wonder that accusations of “hypocrite” are making the rounds lately. Conservative columnist George Will called him “the classic rental politician.”

Among socially conservative voters, Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel is his private life. He divorced his first wife, Jackie, as she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery. He was already in the midst of an affair with wife number two, Marianne, who eventually had to make way for his blonde assistant, Callista Bisek. But none of this prevented him from savagely attacking Bill Clinton after his sexual escapades with Monica Lewinsky came to light.

Marianne summed it all up a few months ago by saying Newt Gingrich “believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected.”