The (Bad) Ideas Guy: Who Let Newt Gingrich Get Away With The GOP ‘Thinker’ Moniker?

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Not only has most of the scrutiny Gingrich has faced come from Republicans who were active in the 1990s (with some on the left, like Chris Hayes, pointing out that he is “widely reviled,” but on the whole not parsing through the most reviling bits of his platform as if Gingrich were serious about them). One gets the impression that most of the worst of Gingrich’s platform is either mocked or dismissed as bluffing, which gives Republicans who want to like him a pass on ignoring the worst he has to offer. The most notable calling out of this nature came from Rachel Maddow, who called Gingrich’s child janitor idea “deliberately provocative,” a “bait” that should be dismissed not as an actual policy suggestion that he would implement as president, but as a soundbite that will make him look combative against the “PC liberal media” and thus raise his positive ratings among Republican primary voters. But is there reason, judging from his career as House Speaker, to believe that an older– and thus, with less to lose– Gingrich would be measured in his policy choices, given even more power than what he had when he was the object from an intra-party mutiny?

There is ample evidence to suggest that Gingrich is profoundly concerning to the wing of the Republican Party that was not comfortable with Republican debate audiences cheering the death of an uninsured man or booing a gay soldier— not to mention those on the left that would have disagreements with those on the right anyway– and yet this doesn’t seem enough to make many in the media take Gingrich’s ridiculous ideas at face value. He’s an “ideas guy,” which means Americans should take at face value Gingrich’s ability to distinguish the good ideas from the bad ones, apparently. Except there is no proof that he can do that.

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Only two prominent pundits so far have succinctly captured this problem– that, yes, Gingrich has ideas, but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily all good ones. One was Bill Maher, who proved to be incredibly prescient in the rise of Gingrich by dedicating a discussion to his own strengths and weaknesses at a time when the media had written him off. Maher didn’t elaborate much, other than to debunk the myth that Gingrich was a genius by stating simply, “he’s an idiot who has always been wrong about every single thing he has ever talked about.”

The other person is Sam Donaldson on ABC’s This Week a few weeks ago, who made a more detailed analysis of the problems with Gingrich than Maher. “He has five ideas a day,” Donaldson explained. “One or two of them are brilliant, one or two of them are okay, and one of them is terrible– and he doesn’t know the difference.” In an emblematic example of how most of the media seems to treat warnings that Gingrich can go off the rails in ways that merit addressing, however, Donaldson’s point was somewhat lost in a bigger conversation about how Gingrich had been embroiled in a “scandal of sanity” over sounding more “reasonable” than other candidates (Rick Perry excepted) on immigration. And herein lies the secret to Gingrich’s success: because he says so, people believe he is smart and reasonable; and when he puts out obvious warning signs that he may not be, the media have given voters free license to dismiss those claims.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.