Gingrich’s performance before and the year after his ascent to speaker of the House offers two vital lessons – one salutary, and the other cautionary
Nearly a month after 2018’s nominal election day, the last votes have been tallied in the last swing district in the United States. A Democratic defeat of a Republican incumbent in California’s Central Valley has given the blue party wave a cumulative gain of 40 seats in the House of Representatives, adding to the majority it had seized back on 6 November.
In addition, the American public’s rebuke of an unpopular president two years into his first term has supplied a piquant historical analogy, one that the Democratic party ought to be studying and heeding. In November 1994, it was Republican insurgents led by Representative Newt Gingrich who delivered the stunning upset, capturing control of both the House and Senate from President Bill Clinton’s party.
The Gingrich who masterminded the Republicans’ 1994 triumph came equipped with ideas and a program
Democrats must keep reminding themselves of how quickly Newt Gingrich undermined his own program and his own power
Samuel G Freedman, an occasional contributor to the Guardian, is a journalism professor at Columbia University and the author of eight books.
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