Beware the Poisonous Newt

Most crossword puzzle freaks - defined as those who would never be caught dead using a pencil - know that the answer to the clue “eft” is “newt.” For those who don’t inhabit the world of Will Shortz (the puzzle editor of both the New York Times, and National Public Radio and likely the world’s leading enigmatologist - “Newt” is a salamander in the subfamily Pleurodelinae. There are easily more than 100 varieties of the creature, a couple of which are highly toxic. The most deadly contain a toxin known as TTX, the most lethal non-protein substance known to man. When ingested into the body, this toxin directly attacks the nervous system and causes muscle paralysis, which can easily lead to cardiac arrest.

But please know that this week’s post deals with a slimy creature belonging not to the Salamandridae family, but rather to the subspecies of Homo Sapiens we shall call letalis ultra-conservativa popularis (Latin for “lethal ultra-conservative Republican”). And by now, I’m pretty sure we’ve all sussed out that the Newt we’re referring to is Newton (“Newt”) Leroy Gingrich, House Speaker during the Clinton administration, primary author of the “Contract With (Against?) America, and current Fox News contributor. And like his animal kingdom namesake, he can be plenty toxic. Gingrich, like the the “Man From M.A.G.A.” whom he adores, loves lights, camera, action and all the attention a narcissist can handle. As a 10-term member of the House of Representatives from Georgia’s Sixth District, he was never what you’d call a legislative powerhouse; he’s always been more interested proving that he’s the smartest guy in the room. Like the former president, he has a long track record of treating his first two wives like dirt and once blamed his marital indiscretions (he was actually having an affair with his soon-to-be third wife while leading the impeachment charge against then-President Clinton) actually blamed them on his love of country, saying: "There's no question [that] at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.")

Over many years, Gingrich has co-written a series of “alternate history” novels about the Civil War (Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant: The Final Victory) and World War II (Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8, and Days of Infamy), as well as dystopian novels (with titles like Treason, Duplicity and Collusion). Among the things one learns about the former Speaker through reading his fiction are that:

He isn’t a very good writer;
He is history’s deus ex machina;
He has an abiding love of - and extraordinary admiration for - white men who almost single-handedly change the course of history . . . and not necessarily for the better.

Newt’s self-image is that of a prophet; one who not only can see the future . . . but has been endowed with the power to shape it in his own toxic image. His latest prophecy was announced to the world this past Sunday on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bertimoro. In addition to railing against the current Democratic legislative agenda, he suggested that people who favor higher levels of government spending to build out the social-safety net are in thrall to a "secular religion" (as opposed to the supply-side economics that have governed the Republican Party ever since Art Laffer laid out the theory on a cocktail napkin in 1974) and compared its practitioners to the Jacobins and Bolsheviks. Then came the bombshell, based on a Gingrich op-ed piece published in Newsweek, entitled "The Wolves Will Become Sheep," in which he accused the Jan. 6 Committee of being a “lynch mob,” but (as was the case in his TV segment on Fox) does not cite any specific laws that have been broken by investigators. The closest he came to making an actual indictment was saying that “The Jan. 6 Select Committee is in the process of potentially bankrupting scores of Americans who worked for or supported President Trump. They face financial ruin defending themselves against the committee’s attack.” Say what?

Forgetting that during the Obama years, the Republican-led Congress spent more time and money investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in the attack in Benghazi, Libya (in which 4 Americans - including the American ambassador were murdered by terrorists) than it did on the 9/11 attack, Gingrich floated the idea that the January 6 Committee was nothing more than a “partisan lynch mob” (despite having 2 Republicans on that committee) To all but the politically deaf, dumb and blind, it was obvious that the real purpose of the innumerable Benghazi hearings was to drive down Secretary Clinton’s national polling numbers on the way to the 2016 presidential election.

With regards to the single, ongoing January 6 committee hearing, Gingrich blustered that once the G.O.P. took back the majority after the 2022 mid-term elections, committee members would be tried and sent to prison. And this prognostication came on the heels of possible future Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggesting that come January 2023, he would move to have members of the January 6 committee stripped of all their House committee assignments . . . if not expelled and put on trial.

This streak of authoritarianism as exemplified by former Speaker Gingrich, possible future Speaker McCarthy, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz (who is giving serious consideration to his state seceding from the Union) is breathtaking in its gall, its political chutzpah and utter political toxicity. Among those in Gingrich’s corner, one finds such political oddities as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (who, though loudly, proudly, defiantly unvaccinated, has been buying and selling stock in Pfizer and Moderna, which likely makes her guilty of insider trading) and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz who, appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast said “You know what, Newt’s right! We are going to take power. And when we do, it’s not going to be the days of Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy where the Republicans go limp-wristed, where they lose their backbone, and they fail to send a single subpoena.” On the same podcast, Bannon himself also floated the idea of impeaching Joe Biden. It’s probably just a matter of time before both ideas—Gingrich’s and Bannon’s—are the default positions for Republicans running for office.

Indeed, as Charles Dickens wrote in the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, …”

Beware the toxicity of a Newt Gingrich, the authoritarianism of a Steve Bannon or the seditiousness of a Donald Trump; for where they go, poison enters the body politic.

And to them and those who support them I say: Be careful what you pray for . . . .