Why Would You Want to Be Speaker Anyway?

“The last three decades have seen an endless succession of coups, scandals, and humiliations, at times reducing the position of Speaker of the House to a hollowed-out title hardly anybody of note even wanted to claim. By this point, the rituals of plotting and counterplotting are so deeply ingrained that every new Republican Speaker is greeted with built-in opposition and ready speculation as to who will take over as the next Speaker after the newly inaugurated one is inevitably deposed. … The congressional Republican fratricide era began with the rise of Newt Gingrich (more on him shortly). But its intellectual roots stretch back to the early 1960s, when the upstart conservative movement first crawled out of the primordial ooze and set out to seize control of the party.”

Jonathan Chait

Newt Gingrich Is Still Wrong

“I think he’s the most important Senate candidate in the country because he’ll do more to change the Senate just by the sheer presence, by his confidence, by his deep commitment to Christ, by the degree to which he has – you know, he’s been through a long, tough period. He had a lot of concussions coming out of football.”

— Newt Gingrich, defending Herschel Walker (R) on Fox News.

Why Trump Has No Second-Term Agenda

“He has been so intensely focused on all of the implications of coronavirus and the economic problems that he frankly had not thought about it. He had a checklist and this came up in late August. You end up with only so much brain space and adrenaline and that is what happened.”

— Newt Gingrich, when asked by Politico why President Trump has not come up with a second term agenda.

Why Congress Is So Dumb

“Our decay as an institution began in 1995, when conservatives, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), carried out a full-scale war on government. Gingrich began by slashing the congressional workforce by one-third. He aimed particular ire at Congress’s brain, firing 1 of every 3 staffers at the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office. He defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, a tech-focused think tank. Social scientists have called those moves Congress’s self-lobotomy, and the cuts remain largely unreversed.”

— Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), writing in the Washington Post

Newt Gingrich Is Still Delusional

“The great political surprise of 2018 will be the size of the Republican victory. After members of the elite media have spent two years savaging President Trump, lying about Republican legislation, and reassuring themselves that Republican defeat was inevitable, the size of the GOP victory in 2018 will be an enormous shock.”

— Newt Gingrich, writing for Fox News.

Gingrich Disses Sacamucci

“I think that Scaramucci had better be a lot more careful than he has been. He obviously likes the limelight. He obviously likes being in the media. I would say right now that he’s being more pugnacious than effective. I think he ought to slow down a little bit and learn what he’s doing… If he’s gonna be that divisive, I’m not sure he’s gonna be very useful to the President. … I think Scaramucci’s full of himself.”

— Newt Gingrich, harshly criticizing White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci in a radio interview with Laura Ingraham, calling his recent actions “divisive” and “unhelpful.”