Gingrich: A question of temperament

“Is Newt Gingrich nuts?” said Jacob Weisberg in Slate​.com. In the rough-and-tumble world of U.S. politics, accusing one’s opponents of having “crazy” ideas is a common practice. But in the case of Gingrich, now the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, many prominent Republicans are openly questioning whether he’s mentally fit to be the leader of the free world. Throughout his career in public life, Gingrich has displayed an alarming “grandiosity and megalomania,” describing himself as a “definer of civilization” and a “transformational figure” who helped defeat communism and is fated to play a critical role in history, like Churchill. The Republican establishment is in “full, unconcealed panic” at Gingrich’s sudden ascent in the polls, said Andrew Sullivan in TheDailyBeast.com, describing him as narcissistic, dangerous, and “not stable.” TV talk-show host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who served under Gingrich in the House, said he’s “a terrible person” who alienated most of his colleagues and would do the same to independent voters—thus ensuring Barack Obama’s re-election.

Gingrich may have changed, said Paul Gigot in WSJ.com. Those advising him during the current, near-miraculous political comeback “say he’s mellowed with age and since his conversion to Catholicism and that he has a new calm about him.” In last weekend’s Iowa debate, certainly, the candidate who took the stage was a model of restraint and self-discipline, enduring attacks from all sides with good humor and maturity. If this new “Cool Hand Newt” remains on display, conservatives may well make him their nominee. What really troubles the “Beltway Republican establishment,” said Christian Whiton in FoxNews.com, is not Newt’s supposed lack of stability, but his independence. As president, Gingrich would turn Washington upside down. Hence the current effort to smear him as a madman.

Don’t believe “the myth of the New Newt,” said Rich Lowry in NationalReview.com. Since he began running for president, the older and supposedly wiser Gingrich, 68, has denounced Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform proposal as “right-wing social engineering,” then pretended he didn’t mean it; blasted Obama for not intervening in Libya, and then for intervening; and called for poor children to be hired as janitors in schools. “Beware: The Old Newt lurks.” Republican voters looking for a candidate to keep the spotlight on President Obama’s dismal record next year don’t want a nominee who’ll make the election a referendum on his own sanity.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Look—there’s only one viable conservative left in this race, said Jed Babbin in The American Spectator, and it’s Newt. Conservatives like the fact that Gingrich speaks his mind without testing his views on a focus group. And what Gingrich has been saying about the lack of a work ethic among the poor, or the illegitimacy of the Palestinians, “is what a lot of people are thinking.” Gingrich may indeed have become more strategic, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, and that’s what terrifies the GOP establishment the most. “What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination,” and that then, in the glare of the general election campaign, the Old Newt will ruin the GOP’s golden opportunity to beat Obama. That unpredictability is what makes Gingrich so fascinating. “He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, ‘Watch this!’”