The New Gingrich
WASHINGTON — The last time Congressional Republicans were this out of power, they turned to a college professor from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, to lead the opposition, first against President Bill Clinton in a budget battle in 1993, and then back into the majority the following year.
As Republicans confronted President Obama in another budget battle last week, their leadership included another new face: Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, who as the party’s chief vote wrangler is as responsible as anyone for the tough line the party has taken in this first legislative standoff with Mr. Obama. This battle has vaulted Mr. Cantor to the front lines of his party as it tries to recover from the losses of November.
As Republican whip, Mr. Cantor succeeded again on Friday in denying the White House the support of a single House Republican on the stimulus bill. That was a calculated challenge to the president, who, in his weekly address on Saturday, hailed the bill as “an ambitious plan at a time we badly need it.â€
Mr. Cantor said he had studied Mr. Gingrich’s years in power and had been in regular touch with him as he sought to help his party find the right tone and message. Indeed, one of Mr. Gingrich’s leading victories in unifying his caucus against Mr. Clinton’s package of tax increases to balance the budget in 1993 has been echoed in the events of the last few weeks.
“I talk to Newt on a regular basis because he was in the position that we are in: in the extreme minority,†he said.
The Republicans can certainly count some victories, although symbolic ones. Even White House aides said Mr. Cantor and his team had been successful in seizing on spending items in the stimulus bill to sow doubts about it with the public.
The fact that House Republicans have stood firm against Mr. Obama suggests just how unified the caucus is, though Mr. Gingrich, in an interview, said Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, did more to unify Republicans than anything Republicans did.
“I’d like to tell you Cantor did a brilliant job, but the truth is that Pelosi and Obey pushed the members into his arms,†Mr. Gingrich said. But, he added, “They have been good at developing alternatives so they don’t leave their guys out there chanting no.â€
The Republican Party is arguably weaker today than it was in 1993, given Mr. Obama’s popularity and the enormous weight Republicans are carrying after eight years under President George W. Bush. Even as Mr. Cantor was urging Republicans to oppose Mr. Obama on this signature plan, he offered praise of the president, suggesting that Republicans should be careful to avoid being labeled obstructionist.
“I think people out there across the country elected this president because he inspired the notion that we can change,†he said. “Not to be so trite as to invoke his campaign slogan, but I do think there was some substance behind it in terms of what people thought in voting for him.
“Banking off that mood of the country right now, I think it’s incumbent upon us to reach out to him and see if we can work together.â€
Mr. Cantor, along with the House minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, faces the challenge of trying to lead a shrinking and increasingly conservative caucus. The party also faces the burden of trying to advance what Mr. Cantor describes as its bedrock value — smaller government — in the face of considerable evidence that the American public wants an increasingly active government to deal with the economic crisis.
And it is Mr. Cantor who is pushing the party in a direction that Democrats, and some Republicans, say is risky: almost lock-step opposition to Mr. Obama’s economic plan. Democrats have already made clear that they intend to use those votes against Republicans in 2010, and sooner, with advertisements noting the middle-class tax cuts included in the bill.
Mr. Cantor’s increasing prominence is in many ways a reminder of the difficult time the party faces after losing the presidential election and in the absence of any high-profile Republican leaders in the House or the Senate. Mr. Boehner routinely defers to him at news conferences, reflecting the concern of Republicans that they put forward new and relatively young faces. (Mr. Cantor is 45, but looks younger.)
Mr. Cantor, who has exhibited an eye for winning attention, has rushed in to fill the leadership vacuum with a daily diet of news conferences, interviews, speeches on the House floor and television appearances. “ALERT: Cantor Holds Economic Recovery Roundtable,†a news release from his office announced, in describing an economic forum he will hold on Wall Street this week.
He is the only Jewish Republican in the House. This has created a thoroughly unlikely circumstance for the Republican Party, given that its other most prominent face these days is the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, the first African-American to hold the post.
Mr. Cantor, who grew up in Richmond, is soft-spoken with a whisper of a Southern accent. A lawyer, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates before being elected to Congress in 2000, filling the seat once held by James Madison, as he likes to remind people.
In discussing the Republican defeat, he said: “I don’t think it was an outright rejection of what I call common sense conservative principles. And as a Virginian, holding James Madison’s seat, I don’t think it was a rejection of the principles upon which this country was built.â€
Mr. Cantor is certainly different from Mr. Gingrich in some significant ways. “He’s not Newt — giving off sparks every 15 seconds,†said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax reform, an influential conservative group. “While I never bought the criticism of Newt that being an ideas factory meant he suffered from A.D.D. — I think it was an unfair rap on him — to his advantage, Cantor is seen as both an ideas person and steady and stable.â€
Beyond that, friends of both say that Mr. Gingrich is more intellectually adventurous than Mr. Cantor, but also more prone to overreach.
“I would say my manner is such that it would seem to be a little more demure,†Mr. Cantor said.
Demure or not, Mr. Cantor’s press secretary was forced to apologize last week after e-mailing to a reporter a video filled with vulgar language making fun of labor unions, in response to an advertisement from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees pressing Republicans to support the Obama plan.
Mr. Cantor acknowledged that Mr. Obama had won points from the public for appearing less partisan than Republicans in this battle, but he warned that the president should not draw the wrong lesson.
“I think it would be short-sighted for him to take away from a zero vote that he shouldn’t even mess with us anymore,†he said.
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He isnt conservative enough. But its a start.
A conservative is someone who thinks there should be NO government hand outs of any kind
what is it with the republicans. they are a bunch of wimps when they are in power and spend not better than the dems. when they are out of power all of the sudden the grow a pair??
the dems are like fedex, they will absolutely positively get us to hell tomorrow. you can even track status real time. (like right now!!)
the republicans are like the us post office. we are addressed to go to hell, but it will take a while, get routed god knows where, never really know where you are, but there is a chance that you get returned to sender.
shitty position all the way around.
They had to do something not to be labeled obstructionist. It’s all about politics to offer an alternative.
I’ve been trying to post about GOP Young Guns for sometime now but have been unable. Not sure what is going on with the site.
Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan (my homey WI), Bobby Jindal, Mitch McConnel, Michael Steele and Pat Toomey(who will replace Arlen Spectator with y’alls help). Sounds like a deep bench to me. Then add Sarah and we actually have a snowballs chance in hell of taking back this country.
Communism Sucks. Just a sample that relates to Dumbo The Big Eared Czar…this from the official record of the 1963 congress. It refers to the communist goals of that era.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
Need I say more?
The republicans need congress and back. It needs to be done by 2010. I would back this guy..
Fuck this guy and fuck the Republican party.
I won’t ever vote Republicrat or Demonrat again! I’ll vote third party from this point forward, and since I live in Socialist Republic of Mexifornia my Republicrat vote is wasted anyway.
Just heard that part of the Stimulus was to fund an arm of ACORN to go to rural areas to install the converter boxes for digital TV.
Also CHIP funds all illegals up to 30 years old.
Now Obama wants to put the military under UN jurisdiction!
When Cantor was my Rep. and you called his office really pissed… he’d very often return the call himself. Pretty straight shooter.
Guys the closest in our tool box to someone with the nuts to take on the Washington Axis of Evil.
I would like to see the party hold steadfast on immigration, I believe that most legals support the rule of law and any vote we may lose to non-supportors, we would pick up with supporters.
Parties be damned, I am for the country.
I was wondering where Newt was in this maelstrom. He has been resurrected in the form of Eric Cantor. I hope that he as no baggage like the Republicans who were elected with Newt’s help in “93 and after. You know, the ones who spent like crazy and chased after girls and boys. We need to get back to our roots: low taxes and small government. I do not need some liberal telling me to share the rewards of my hard work with some muslim bitch who wants 14 children or illegal aliens who clog up the health care system for free [to them, but not to us, the taxpayer]. The new Republicans can be exciting. And fuck Spector, Snowe and Collins.
The republican party is not going to win us an election. WE THE PEOPLE are going to do it. We need a new party for these fucked times.
I don’t know why I have to actually explain this to people but I guess I do.
How does one fight a war of propaganda when almost all of your side’s avenues of information dissemination are controlled by your adversary’s propaganda machine? This NY Times’ article is a perfect example: they chose how to write this, who to quote or not quote, and what quotes to use (and what quotes not to use).
As much as many of us would like GOP leaders to rip Obama a new a**hole each and every day - because he deserves it - such a ‘public’ strategy as this will only serve the propaganda goals of the Networks, Newspapers, and Demo-Marxist Party.
It is up to US to attack the propaganda machine. We must be the ones who ultimately drive people like Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Katie Couric, and George Stephanopoulos off of this country’s networks. We must be the ones who kill off Fascist-Left rag newspapers like the New York Times. We must be the ones who crush the cyberspace organs of Fascist-Left financial/political power: e.g. MoveOn, Daily Kos, and Media Matters. We must be the ones who inform idiots like Reid, Schumer, Collins, and Specter that we despise their arrogance… and hate their guts. The Republican Party can’t do this for us; Conservative Talk Radio can’t do this for us either!
And I’m tired of hearing, or reading, how much alike the GOP and Democrats ’supposedly’ are. The ‘bill’ for all of George’s ‘bi-partisanship’ - along with the ‘bill’ for the ENTIRE WAR on Islamic Fascism - is ‘kid-stuff’ compared to this “Spendulus” abomination Emperor Nero (Obama) will sign into law tomorrow.
And “Nero” is by no means done; he and the “wicked witch of the west” (Speaker No-nothing Pelosi) have only just begun!
“It is up to US to attack the propaganda machine.”
“And I’m tired of hearing, or reading, how much alike the GOP and Democrats ’supposedly’ are.”
Not only the way to beat them but the way to stop beating ourselves. Pun intended.
Three cheers, and many
to you for this one!
Well I for one am glad it’s been explained again for me Demogorgon.
Oh… is it OK with you if I vote?
Just wondering.
Fuck this guy and fuck the Republican party. I won’t ever vote Republicrat or Demonrat again! I’ll vote third party from this point forward, and since I live in Socialist Republic of Mexifornia my Republicrat vote is wasted anyway.
Mart, in spite of your defection, in this now socialist dominated political climate, a third party vote will be a vote for socialism. There never has been and, particularly now, ever will be a viable “Third” party. The Republican party has deep roots, is still well entrenched in the American political system, and definitely in need of major reformation, but this will never happen with defections to a new or old third party. Get a grip, man. “Yes, we can,” doncha know.
It was not a hopeful sign that Cantor said this:
“I think people out there across the country elected this president because he inspired the notion that we can change,†he said. “Not to be so trite as to invoke his campaign slogan, but I do think there was some substance behind it in terms of what people thought in voting for him.
“Banking off that mood of the country right now, I think it’s incumbent upon us to reach out to him and see if we can work together.â€
This is precisely what we must not do. EVER. We need a “no retreat, no surrender, no quarter, no prisoners, scorched earth” policy. We need to take the bastards down using “whatever means necessary”.
I’m sick of Republican thumb sucking. Time to man up. We’ve been lobbing mud balls while the Dems use live ammo.
One should always vote… yes by all means vote. However, when the Continental Congress ‘voted’ to declare our independence that was not the end of the struggle - it was still very much the beginning of the struggle.
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If two of your ‘neighbors’ vote to make you their slave then your one vote to not be their slave doesn’t count for much now does it? Don’t ever fool yourself into believing that your personal situation is so secure, your physical location so remote, that the growing tyranny looming on the horizon will somehow pass you by.
We now have a President who is, at the very least, a ‘true believer’ in Marxism. Aligned with him we have a One-(Socialist)-Party controlled Congress whose leaders (so far anyway) can compel almost complete blind obedience from nearly all of its members. And we have five Justices of the Supreme Court who think the Constitution is just a quaint piece of faded paper, with no relevance to their function as the self-proclaimed final arbiters of virtually everything.
This new ’situation’ has moved far beyond the horse-swapping pork spending and influence-buying campaign bribery of previous governments.
If you have anything ‘they’ can use (and virtually all of us do) ‘they’ will find you. They will take whatever ‘they’ deem necessary “in the name of the people” and if you resist ‘they’ will imprison or kill you. That is the real lesson of history that too many of us, even now, are too damn self-deluded to see.
People who say things like “it could never happen here” are incredibly naive, to put it nicely. I, however, have a less gracious word for it.