It was quite a charade while it lasted, Newt Gingrich playing Edmund Burke in the first half-dozen debates among Republican presidential aspirants. The crabby Gingrich posed as a great statesman, lauding at every turn his opponents onstage as men worthy of sitting in the Oval Office, reserving his ire for journalists who had the temerity to ask probing questions. His was to be a positive campaign, rich with ideas and full of creativity and energy. Nothing was more important for Republicans in 2012 than denying Obama a second term, and Gingrich would do nothing to weaken whoever was ultimately selected as the GOP nominee.
It was a good enough pitch that when Herman Cain's star fell, Gingrich's quickly rose. Within a few days, he went from nowhere in the polls to leading, even surging past presumptive favorite Mitt Romney. But then reality reasserted itself. Ads from a super-PAC run by Romney backers criticized Gingrich's love-seat dalliance with Nancy Pelosi on environmental issues. The Paul campaign broadcast a particularly biting spot portraying Gingrich as a hypocritical Washington insider. And exhaustively researched editorials in this newspaper, National Review Online, and the Wall Street Journal revealed in devastating detail Gingrich's profitable influence peddling on behalf of Freddie Mac and pharmaceutical firms.
Almost as quickly as Statesman Gingrich streaked across the political sky, he reverted to the form long known to Washingtonians: Haughty, easily angered, self-centered, vengeful. For reasons known only to Gingrich, his bitterness settled exclusively on Romney as the man responsible for his fall, erupting with a ferocious string of attacks focused on Romney's alleged sins while he headed the Bain Capital venture investment firm.
On Monday before the New Hampshire primary, for example, Gingrich -- sounding more like leftist documentarian Michael Moore or an anti-free-market obsessive -- pointed a rhetorical spear at Romney: "Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money, or is that somehow a little bit of a flawed system? I do draw a distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods, and leaving behind a factory that should be there."
Think what you will of Romney, it was Gingrich who repeatedly said during the campaign season's early debates that "any one of us on this stage" would make a better president than Obama. But that Gingrich is a faint memory as he now churns out fodder for the Obama smear machine. It was too much for Rush Limbaugh, who upbraided Gingrich for his attacks, even though he has made no secret of his discomfort with Romney: "You could have read this in an Occupy Wall Street flier. The left could not improve on this."
Gingrich's attacks may prompt Romney to confront the Bain issue head on by contrasting private investments that create the likes of Staples with government investments that produce Solyndra bankruptcies. However Romney responds, Gingrich has revealed himself as a man who puts his political vanity above the national interest, no matter that it could mean four more catastrophic years of Obama. Sadly, it came as no surprise to many in Washington.
