Newt Gingrich’s Degraded Legacy
Kevin McCarthy lost his job as speaker of the House because eight of his fellow Republican representatives decided he was insufficiently willing to fight. They believed that he lacked the stomach to use the debt ceiling or the potential of a government shutdown to extract serious concessions from the Democratic Senate and President Joe Biden. And now, nearly two weeks after they ousted McCarthy, Republicans still can’t settle on a replacement. Quite a few of the most combative members insisted they would back only Representative Jim Jordan on the floor, including Representative Lauren Boebert, who told reporters, “I’m ready for somebody who’s gonna throw down and not care who’s in the way.”
Boebert’s bellicosity reflects a deep strand of the modern congressional Republican self-image, stamped on the party three decades ago by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich brought House Republicans out of 40 years in the political wilderness and into the majority, and he did it by being a prophetic champion of confrontation. From his first congressional race in 1974 all the way through the end of his speakership in 1998, Gingrich was motivated by the belief that confrontation had the power to rescue Americans from their corrupted politics. There
