The man who made Trumpism happen
by digby
The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins has written an excellent profile of Newt Gingrich which I recommend to anyone who wants to understand how we got here. This is an excerpt but it’s well worth reading in full:
[W]ading through Gingrich’s various books, articles, and think-tank speeches about Trump, it is difficult to identify any coherent set of “ideas” animating his support for the president. He is not a natural booster for the economic nationalism espoused by people like Steve Bannon, nor does he seem particularly smitten with the isolationism Trump championed on the stump.
Instead, Gingrich seems drawn to Trump the larger-than-life leader—virile and masculine, dynamic and strong, brimming with “total energy” as he mows down every enemy in his path. “Donald Trump is the grizzly bear in The Revenant,” Gingrich gushed during a December 2016 speech on “The Principles of Trumpism” at the Heritage Foundation. “If you get his attention, he will get awake … He will walk over, bite your face off, and sit on you.”
In Trump, Gingrich has found the apotheosis of the primate politics he has been practicing his entire life—nasty, vicious, and unconcerned with those pesky “Boy Scout words” as he fights in the Darwinian struggle that is American life today. “Trump’s America and the post-American society that the anti-Trump coalition represents are incapable of coexisting,” Gingrich writes in his most recent book. “One will simply defeat the other. There is no room for compromise. Trump has understood this perfectly since day one.”
I used to get hit hard by some progressives over my obsession with Gingrich during the Obama years. They felt that I was spending too much time looking at the Republicans, particularly, the combat style that Newt and his political progeny started instead of attacking Barack Obama. I understand the frustration with Democrats. I’ve written millions of words about it over the years, including many attacks on the way the ACA was negotiated and particularly the Grand Bargain, which I opposed from the beginning on both political and ideological grounds.
But I focus on this particular aspect of modern American politics, the radicalization of the Right, because I think it is the most fundamental challenge to our system of government and I don’t think it has a damn thing to do with “issues” or ideology. Newt is clear about this. Trump is too. Take them at their word. Fighting among ourselves won’t fix that problem.
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