“Well right now, [the House] can’t govern, and I think that the eight people who betrayed the conference and joined the Democrats to defeat the 96 percent of the conference unleashed furies that I don’t think they’d even dreamed of, because it gave every person the right to be equally destructive and equally angry.
Hahahaha. No, Newt, those furies were unleashed decades ago by you. Recall Newt’s first big power play against his own party:
On the evening of Oct. 4, 1990, Newt Gingrich and his then-wife, Marianne, were enjoying a VIP reception at a Republican fundraiser when they were suddenly hustled over to have their picture taken with President George H.W. Bush.
“I thought it was a bad idea,” Gingrich said in a series of interviews in 1992 that have not been previously published.
Days earlier, Gingrich had dramatically walked out of the White House and was leading a very public rebellion against a deficit reduction and tax increase deal that Bush and top congressional leaders of both parties — including, they thought, Gingrich — had signed off on after months of tedious negotiations. The House was to vote on the deal the very next day.
“We went over and I said [to Bush], ‘I’m really sorry that this is happening,’ and he said with as much pain as I’ve heard from a politician, ‘You’re killing us, you are just killing us.’ ”
Gingrich’s actions both before and after his encounter with Bush showed a man willing, if not eager, to weaken the president and, as he put it, “to dismantle the old order.”
Gingrich, then the party whip and No. 2 Republican in the House, and his followers took down the deal the next day, severely undercutting Bush and highlighting the betrayal of his famous “Read my lips: no new taxes” pledge. In some key respects, Gingrich’s revolt set the stage for Bush’s demise and eventual defeat — as well as the Republican takeover of the House in 1994 that catapulted Gingrich to the speakership.
Gingrich’s defiance and high-visibility debut as provocateur in 1990 was a decisive moment for him. It was the first chance he had to exercise real political power, providing an early glimpse of the complexity and the contradictions that he has displayed since.
Recall that Newt succeeded in helping to defeat Bush in 1992 and was rewarded for it by making him Speaker of the House in 1994.
This is your monster, Newt. You paved the way for bomb-throwing narcissists to blow everything up. They learned from the best.