Second is the personal stuff. As the Editors point out, Newt has been a major figure in our politics for a very long time. We all know the marital history, and we all know it is relevant. There is, however, no need to dwell on it beyond saying it is obviously an issue voters must weigh — though hardly the top of the list. Yet the Editors make it the top of the list. It is Count One of their indictment, and they make sure to spell out that we’re talking not only about divorces but also about multiple marriages to “mistresses.” Later, just in case we’ve been too dense to get the Newt-is-a-betrayal-waiting-to-happen point, the Editors conclude by admonishing Republicans “to reject a hasty marriage to Gingrich, which would risk dissolving in acrimony” — the lasting impression they decided was worth emblazoning in big bold letters at the top of the homepage all day long. This has all the subtlety of Obama’s class-warfare tropes. I’m not contending that there’s no there there, but c’mon. I don’t want to cringe reading an editorial written by friends of mine any more than I want to wince hearing Newt talk about Bain Capital.
And as for Gingrich’s Republican “colleagues,” whom the Editors applaud for ejecting him from the speakership, no one can deny that they had their reasons. But is there not another side of that story worth telling? In the seven years they controlled Congress after Gingrich left, didn’t these esteemed colleagues have something of a “weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas”? Under a Republican president, they added over $3 trillion to the federal deficit, shunned conservative policy in favor of Beltway influence-peddling, and so damaged the GOP brand that we ended up, first, with an electoral rout that lost the majority Gingrich had worked years to forge, and then, with Obama. How much should I really care that Newt’s fabulous colleagues think his reemergence would be a disaster for Republicans? Lest these characters forget, it is the Tea Party and President Obama’s radicalism that have put them back in the saddle — 2010 was not a merit promotion; they were the only alternative in town.
The 2012 election will be about a government careering toward financial ruin, and Gingrich is the candidate who can say he actually wrestled the federal budget into balance — by comparison, Gov. Jon Huntsman, who the Editors say rates “serious consideration,” blew out Utah’s budget, raising government spending by a whopping 33 percent. In an election about the imperative to repeal Obamacare, Gingrich is the candidate who helped defeat Hillarycare — by comparison, Governor Romney ushered in a health-care system that became a model for Obamacare (and he stubbornly continues to insist that it was a great achievement — the main reason he can’t crack the 25 percent ceiling in most polls). In an election that is about grappling with budget-busting entitlements, Gingrich is the candidate who reformed welfare — which, the Editors acknowledge, is “the most successful social policy of recent decades.”
Is Newt guilty of so many missteps that the tremendous good he has done is outweighed? I don’t think so, but that is what the primary process is about. Although I think NR should stay out of the endorsement/disqualification business at this early stage of the GOP race, I would not complain if my colleagues were simply assessing both sides of the ledger and deciding that other candidates are preferable to Gingrich. But to conclude that he is unfit, as the Editors do, is not only wrong; it is a gross exaggeration. NR absolutely should give conservatives the information they deserve — good and bad — to make an intelligent choice. Moreover, while I don’t subscribe to this view, it is certainly defensible to argue that beating Obama is so vital that nominating a surer winner trumps nominating a potentially better president. But to declare, as the Editors do, that Gingrich should be “exclude[d] from consideration” is an unfair evaluation of his candidacy; more significantly, it is a disservice to conservatives and other Republicans, who are more than capable of assessing his worthiness vel non.
