Tag Archives: Newt Gingrich

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

How did nearly half the country — Trump fans and FNC viewers — get things so wrong?

A reporter asked me today why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus. I tried to explain that one of the dangerous consequences of having a totally dishonest left wing news media was that most Americans discounted their hysteria as phony. – Newt Gingrich

This sample of duplicity and distraction, from a familiar Fox News Channel contributor, is classic Gingrich. The first sentence presents an issue raised by a reporter: “why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus.” The second sentence goes completely off the rails. It’s a clinic on how Trump and Trump apologists obfuscate, distort, and deceive.

“I tried to explain,” begins Gingrich, the ever-tolerant professor offering instruction. Well, not exactly. Instead, in an act of misdirection, he hurls incendiary language, attacking media outfits seeking to inform the public, while completely ignoring the explanation in plain sight.

The issue is why conservatives have been ‘skeptical.’ Polling clearly demonstrates that there has been a persistent reluctance on the right to accept well-established facts. It is hardly true that “most Americans” discounted accurate reports of the threat from the sources where they get their news. A majority of Democrats and independents (who together outnumber Republicans) have taken the reports as credible. We believed what we heard and saw on cable and broadcast television and what we read in newspapers and online. It is a minority of Americans – base Republicans, Donald Trump’s most intense followers – who have been skeptical of the scientific and medical reporting on the coronavirus.

Why were conservatives – grassroots enthusiasts of Donald Trump – so thoroughly misinformed about coronavirus?

CNN and NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post (to highlight a few of Trump’s bugbears), while fallible, share a journalistic mission: to find the facts and accurately report them. Since the news business is competitive, they seek to get it right, because – otherwise – their errors will be exposed by other mainstream news outlets. They will lose credibility among viewers and readers who wish to know what’s going on. We can say the same thing about scientists, medical researchers, and doctors: while they make mistakes, they try to get it right.

Conservative media do not embrace this journalistic mission (or the ethos of science) to inform accurately. Their job, in the conservative media ecosystem, is to bolster faith in their leader, to cast doubt on facts that might undermine that faith, and to attack and disparage anyone who contradicts the message of the day.

Gingrich, who changed the Republican Party, the Congress, and finally the country, by teaching other Republicans to insult, denigrate, and slander Democrats, introduced an era in American politics where one party (the GOP) has made the other party the enemy, where Democrats’ views are so far beyond the pale they deserve only contempt. Part of this project was to undermine independent (“totally dishonest left wing”) sources of information (from journalists, government agencies, scientists, and medical authorities, among others), whenever or wherever that information challenged conservative messaging.

In Adam Serwer’s words (“Donald Trump’s Cult of Personality Did This“):

Gingrich’s attempted indictment of the mainstream press is a backhanded acknowledgment that the conservative media do not conceive of their job as informing the public.

. . .

Fox News told its audience that the coronavirus was a minor problem their heroic leader was quickly resolving, while quietly having its staff follow the very precautions its hosts were ridiculing on air. The mainstream press didn’t force Fox News to do that.

Gingrich, offering pronouncements from Italy, separated himself from the skepticism of American conservatives, but he has had a staring role in bolstering the conservative media universe that has deliberately deceived its audience and in destroying confidence in independent reporting and inquiry that has created that audience. These conservative achievements, not mainstream media reporting, are responsible for the “dangerous consequences” he references.

Gingrich’s tweet presents a phony explanation for why conservative viewers and readers are sadly misinformed about a grave threat to public health.

Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

The Trump administration is destroying the country’s governing capacity

After Jonathan Bernstein (“The Long, Slow Destruction of the U.S. Government”) lists disheartening examples from Thursday of ways the Trump administration is “destroying the U.S. government,” and briefly reviews previous misdeeds, he aptly sums things up in the quote of the day:

“… [T]here’s nothing systematic about any of what’s happening here. No plan. No strategy. No effort to separate the worthwhile from the worthless. It’s just basically random attacks on random pieces of the government. It will take years to recover from. In some ways, perhaps the nation will never recover. 
As with the failure to fill positions with confirmed presidential nominees, it’s always possible that some of this will lead to very visible catastrophic failure. But what’s more likely is just an erosion of the capacity of the nation. We won’t necessarily be able to connect the dots when things go wrong, but there will be effects, and they are likely to stretch out into the future.”

Yeah. I take his point. Trump’s notable weaknesses as an executive and every personality flaw are at play — so the actions appear random and senseless.

My first thought (I guess it’s an obsession) is: Where are the responsible leaders of the Republican Party? We hear a murmur here and there, regarding this or that action, or this resignation, or that nomination, or the failure to nominate … but the debacle continues unabated.

These guys are just going along for the ride. As long as they can lower taxes for the GOP donor class, gut regulation across the board, and stack the courts with ideologues — what’s not to like?

But this moment’s reflection provides the insight on the grand plan at work. From Ronald Reagan’s “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” to Grover Norquist’s “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” through Newt Gingrich’s deliberate campaign to undermine public trust in our governing institutions and Mitch McConnell’s embrace of dysfunction and implacable opposition to bipartisan policy making, movement conservatism has been committed to a long term strategy of diminishing the size and scope and stature of government.

If government becomes less effective, less responsive, less capable — so be it. If the capacity of government and the reservoir of public trust disintegrate — so be it.

The Republican Party is in thrall of an ideology. Conservative doctrine hasn’t changed much since the country put Reagan in the White House. Movement conservatives purged the liberals and moderates from the GOP. Then they went after the pragmatists. They have beaten back reliance on science, empirical evidence, and a rational process of making policy when these conflicted with conservative doctrine (as they must from time to time). And, more recently, they have been willing to shame or oust Republicans who have resisted the authoritarian impulses, the sowing of racial and ethnic discord, the affection for dictators, the self-dealing, the chaos, and much else that Donald Trump has ushered in.

Most Republicans in office have chosen to go along to get along — so long as it doesn’t threaten their next bid for reelection. Does that count as a plan?

One might object that conservative ideology, circa 1980, didn’t entail stupidity or overreach or hate. That wasn’t the plan. Perhaps not.

But conservative true believers from the beginning demanded fidelity to the one true cause (as they defined it). And over the past four decades, as the movement has advanced and grown more powerful, they have become relentlessly more rapacious, less open to accommodation of their political foes, and unalterably opposed to dissenting voices. We have reached a point where collateral damage to democratic institutions, to the country’s economy, and to the public welfare warrants no more than a shrug, if preserving these things stands in the way of conservative victories.

There may be a point at which a substantial number of Republican office holders choose to step back from inevitable devotion to (what passes for) conservatism. There may be a point where principle or patriotism, where the Constitution or a diverse body politic, or where a fundamental sense of right and wrong trumps conformity to conservative dogma (as mediated by Fox News, et al.).

Thus far, there are few signs that this day is imminent. Instead, we have the plan, the system, the strategy of the conservative movement: fidelity, come what may, to an intractable ideology. Start down this path and, even when things turn stupid and ugly, there’s no way out of the cul de sac.

(Image from wikipedia.)

Democracy, Donald Trump

Amid deep background reporting and anonymous bravado, the overall picture is unchanged: a train wreck of a presidency

In a week when Bob Woodward’s “Fear” paints in chilling detail a portrait of a White House engulfed in conflict, chaos, and covert insubordination, and an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times attests to the derisive views of President Trump by those closest to him and persistent workarounds to keep him from getting his way, what have we learned?

Conflict in presidential administrations is commonplace. Appointees often represent wings of a political party with different priorities than the president. Directives are often ignored by cabinet members. Aides try to protect the president from his worse impulses. This is all normal.

“But,” Jonathan Bernstein writes, “what we’re hearing about in these Trump stories is sort of a radical version of standard operating procedure for White House staff and the executive branch when faced with a president who is utterly unfit for the job.”

Donald Trump is impulsive, indulges in reckless rants and incoherence, has a short attention span, is easily distracted, lacks intellectual curiosity, is ignorant of history and policy, and reveals an irrepressible narcissism. We already know all this (which touches only on Trump’s mental capacity, not on his prejudice, avarice, or lack of principle) from watching the public Donald Trump and, for anyone who reveres democratic government, this is frightening. In Bernstein’s words:

What’s really scary is that Trump’s ineptitude at his job means that the normal constraints that keep presidents from doing terrible things may simply not apply. Normal presidents care about their professional reputation among those they work with, and about their popularity among the nation at large, and so they attempt to do the sorts of things that would enhance their reputations and make voters like them. Because he’s unable to even try to do those things — because he has apparently has no sense at all of how the job works — Trump doesn’t see the clear warning signs and then back off things that damage himself and the nation.

Or, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Timothy L. O’Brien puts it, “he generally doesn’t care about the long-term damage he might inflict on himself or those around him as long as he’s the center of attention.” That’s truly scary because the entire political system, as those who have read Federalist 51 will recognize, depends on politicians who care deeply about avoiding damage to themselves.

Federalist 51, generally attributed to James Madison, describes the features of the Constitution intended to “furnish the proper checks and balances between different departments” of government, such as constraints on personal ambition and buffers against encroachment of one branch on another. As remarkable as Donald Trump’s incapacity is, equally remarkable is the implacable abdication of the Republican majority in Congress to provide oversight over the executive branch.

Two of the President’s ‘critics’ in the majority party – both of whom have chosen not to seek reelection, which would require them to face the GOP voter base (still in lockstep with Trump) – find no grounds for disputing the devastating portrait of their leader.

Senator Bob Corker: “This is what all of us have understood to be the situation from day one… I understand this is the case and that’s why I think all of us encourage the good people around the President to stay. I thank General Mattis whenever I see him…”

Senator Ben Sasse: “It’s just so similar to what so many of us hear from senior people around the White House, you know, three times a week. So it’s really troubling, and yet in a way, not surprising.”

Neither Senator proposed any activity by Congress to remedy the situation our nation finds itself in. Congressional investigations of the executive branch are commonplace, even when the same party controls both Congress and the White House. Yet taking a closer look at what is going on is not in the cards for this Congress.

There is ample evidence, dating back to Newt Gingrich’s first days as Speaker of the House, of Republicans paring back the capacity of Congress to do its job. The inability to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka Obamacare) is the most glaring example of this failure in the current Congress (in part because no one on the Republican side of the aisle had developed the policy expertise to understand the ACA or to craft a plausible alternative, and no one in the leadership or among committee chairmen cared enough to do so).

Nonetheless, Speaker Paul Ryan and his team, which encouraged investigation after investigation of Benghazi (while boasting that it would harm Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election prospects) hasn’t simply forgotten Congress’s investigative role. Republicans have actually catalogued scandals and controversies that Congress could be investigating, if it had the will to do so (which is anticipated if Democrats regain the majority in the House this fall). A partial list from Axios, which obtained a copy of a document prepared by House Republicans:

  • President Trump’s tax returns
  • Trump family businesses — and whether they comply with the Constitution’s emoluments clause, including the Chinese trademark grant to the Trump Organization
  • Trump’s dealings with Russia, including the president’s preparation for his meeting with Vladimir Putin
  • The payment to Stephanie Clifford — a.k.a. Stormy Daniels
  • James Comey’s firing
  • Trump’s firing of U.S. attorneys
  • Trump’s proposed transgender ban for the military
  • Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s business dealings
  • White House staff’s personal email use
  • Cabinet secretary travel, office expenses, and other misused perks
  • Discussion of classified information at Mar-a-Lago
  • Jared Kushner’s ethics law compliance
  • Dismissal of members of the EPA board of scientific counselors
  • The travel ban
  • Family separation policy
  • Hurricane response in Puerto Rico
  • Election security and hacking attempts
  • White House security clearances

Things aren’t normal in either the executive or legislative branches of government. (I’ll set aside for the moment consideration of the judicial branch, which will be transformed for at least a generation as Brett Kavanaugh takes a seat on the Supreme Court and the U.S. Senate continues to approve ideologues to district and appellate courts nationwide.)

Things aren’t normal because the Republican Party has become an outlier, trashing traditional governing norms whenever it has glimpsed a partisan advantage, while ignoring – and diverting attention from – the resulting harm to the country.

September 9, 2018 update: Barack Obama reentered the political fray on Friday, decrying the course our nation is on, the absence of checks and balances, and the urgency of changing direction.

“This is not normal. These are extraordinary times. And they’re dangerous times.”

Image: Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) running for dear life in “The Fugitive.”

 

Republicans, Tribalism

GOPAC memo – Language: A Key Mechanism of Control – Gingrich’s declaration of war against civil debate and respect for opponents

Written by Newt Gingrich, poll tested by Frank Luntz, “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” was distributed to Republican legislative candidates throughout the country in 1990. GOPAC, a political organization founded in 1978, provided video tapes to train Republican candidates how to run for office. The memo provides “contrasting words,” a grab bag of rebukes and insults, which can be directed at opposing candidates, and “optimistic positive governing words” to describe oneself and ones vision.

This memo comprises one element of the strategic plan Gingrich brought to Congress when he was first elected. He sought to characterize political opponents as though they were enemies, making both civil discussion and comity among law makers impossible to sustain. Gingrich openly embraced  this strategy as a means of undermining public trust in Congress and impairing the institution’s effectiveness. In this 1990 memo, he spread his divisive plan to the state and local level.

Many people, across the political spectrum, bemoan the lack of civility in our political discourse. And in survey after survey, public regard for Congress is at meager levels. Neither of these things is a result of happenstance. We did not arrive here due to an unfortunate, unforeseen turns of events. This was by design.

Here is the text of the memo (from a Wake Forest University archive):

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that “language matters.” In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used at intraining sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: “I wish I could speak like Newt.”

That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.

While the list could be the size of the latest “College Edition” dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Pos[i]tive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.

While the list could be the size of the latest “College Edition” dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Pos[i]tive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.

Please let us know if you have any other suggestions or additions. We would also like to know how you use the list. Call us at GOPAC or write with your suggestions and comments. We may include them in the next tape mailing so that others can benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Optimistic Positive Governing Words

Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the pos[i]tive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!

share, change, opportunity, legacy, challenge, control, truth, moral, courage, reform, prosperity, crusade, movement, children, family, debate, compete, active(ly), we/us/our, candid(ly), humane, pristine, provide, liberty, commitment, principle(d), unique, duty, precious, premise, care(ing), tough, listen, learn, help, lead, vision, success, empower(ment), citizen, activist, mobilize, conflict, light, dream, freedom, peace, rights, pioneer, proud/pride, building, preserve, pro-(issue): flag, children, environment; reform, workfare, eliminate good-time in prison, strength, choice/choose, fair, protect, confident, incentive, hard work, initiative, common sense, passionate

Contrasting Words

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

decay, failure (fail) collapse(ing) deeper, crisis, urgent(cy), destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, liberal, they/them, unionized bureaucracy, “compassion” is not enough, betray, consequences, limit(s), shallow, traitors, sensationalists, endanger, coercion, hypocricy, radical, threaten, devour, waste, corruption, incompetent, permissive attitude, destructive, impose, self-serving, greed, ideological, insecure, anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs; pessimistic, excuses, intolerant, stagnation, welfare, corrupt, selfish, insensitive, status quo, mandate(s) taxes, spend (ing) shame, disgrace, punish (poor…) bizarre, cynicism, cheat, steal, abuse of power, machine, bosses, obsolete, criminal rights, red tape, patronage.

(End of memo text.)

Image (of pages one and three) from Internet Archive, which is also displays all four pages of the memo.