Contract With America II: Made To Be Broken

In a push for 2010–and undoubtedly testing the waters for his own presidential possibilities–Newt Gingrich has said that he wants the Republicans to formulate a new Contract With America.  Is this what’s really needed?  And is Newt the one to lead it?

by Michael Naragon

Newt Gingrich.  His name became familiar in 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress following Bill and Hillary Clinton’s disastrous attempt to take over the health care industry.  In the year or so that followed, Republicans instituted welfare reform and balanced the budget for the first time since LBJ’s presidency.  Clinton, of course, was quick to take credit for the new fiscal conservatism in Washington, and he and the Congress were just as quick to spend the “surplus.”

Many of the Republicans who won in 1994, as Newt will readily proclaim to all who will listen, were moderates.  Therefore, moderate Republicans made him Speaker of the House.  Within a few years, those moderate Republicans had become carbon copies of their Democrat colleagues, spending money like the proverbial drunken sailors, far more concerned with their re-election campaigns than with doing the work of the people.

The same Newt Gingrich that rode the reaction against Clinton’s attempt to take over health care has sat on the sidelines while the Republicans in Congress have fallen away from nearly every tenet of the original Contract.  Now Newt is endorsing liberal Republicans like Dede Scozzafava, claiming to anyone that will listen that the GOP will always be a minority party unless it accepts candidates like Scozzafava, who dropped out of the NY-23 race and endorsed Democrat Bill Owens.

His overarching argument seemed to be eerily similar to the one made by Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA) at a recent town hall meeting when a voter asked of his decision to support Nancy Pelosi as Speaker.  “She had the votes,” Marshall explained.  “If I didn’t vote for her, it would have been very difficult to bring home the kind of programs and funding [i.e., pork] Georgia needs.”

In an interview with Sean Hannity after the election, Newt defended his choice to endorse Scozzafava by explaining that he would never have become Speaker without the election of the so-called moderates.  He then proceeded to fall into the tired “big tent” diatribe that liberals love to parrot when they discuss the imminent downfall of Republicans.  Moreover, Gingrich has said that running conservative candidates against liberal Republicans in any of the 2010 races would be “destructive,” according to a Politico interview.

Now, this same Newt Gingrich is asking Republicans and Chairman Michael Steele to compile a new Contract, presumably focusing on fiscal responsibility and deficit spending.  If the GOP, which is still essentially run by liberals and moderates (see: Election 2008, John McCain), formulates such a contract, could someone please ask Newt to put in some sort of time element, so we can at least plan for the day when all the new Republicans in the House and Senate will begin acting like their Democrat counterparts and continue to spend us all into oblivion?

If the Republican Party supports power over principle, then what exactly is the advantage in voting for the GOP in 2010 or beyond?