He put out a sort of 'candidates guide' of inflammatory language for Republicans to use against Democrats. It paid off big in 1994, and its basic outlines are still followed. Much of what he suggested was already visible in Republican campaigning, but he systematized it and recruited to it. The present 'heighten the contradictions' strategy of the Republicans pretty well began with him.

IMO, Gingrich is almost single-handedly responsible for the monstrosity that today's GOP has become, with lots of help along the way from Cheney and PNAC, and most recently from Mitch McConnell.

It also has helped to have a M$M that has been complicit in nearly every way and has failed to live up to its responsibility to inform rather than entertain.

I have never been a fan or supporter of the GOP. But until 1994, there were more in the party who were at least semi-reasonable and certainly not outright traitors to our institutions.

The FCC was manipulated to work for corporations instead of us. Tax cuts were designed to reward Republican donors. The limitations on media ownership were relaxed by GOP.

It's been a work in progress for too many years.

Why the very name is enough to laugh him off the stage!'

Early on, many ridiculed him. As I recall, he was a particular target of Ms magazine

could be corralled for one person's goals.

Newt started with a wish list. Then as Speaker, he corralled all Republican. It was irrelevant whether they were conservative, libertarian, liberal, whatever. He convinced them that if they voted against the republican agenda (meaning, him), they would lose their seat in a primary. Slowly, the less-than-conservatives either didn't run for re-election or waited for the axe to fall on them. And it was more than political. Bipartisanship became a quaint congressional artifact. Representatives from both parties stopped eating lunch together and/or socializing outside of "work". While the Democrats still extended their hands across the aisle, Republicans either ignored them or responded by slapping their hands.

With Gingrich leading the charge in 1994, Republicans became the majority party in the House for the first time in decades. He was getting results. And it's been downhill ever since.

https://www.history.com/news/midterm-elections-1994-republican-revolution-gingrich-contract-with-america

"It's hard to hate the parents of a kid who's on your kid's baseball team. To a great degree the 1994 election changed that. Newt Gingrich told Republicans to run against Washington. They did that and they won. He told them to keep their families in their home districts ... members would fly into D.C. on Monday afternoon and fly out on Thursday afternoon, a practice that has continued until this day."

Easier to demonize people you don't know or socialize with, Newt's plan. I remember hearing that Newt told his staff to make sure he never ran into Bill Clinton, because Bill was so charming that it was hard to hate him. I also remember a Vanity Fair article after G.W. Bush was elected about how now that there was a president who went to bed early, D.C. social life was dead. Making fun of liberals in the 80s seems benign compared to the hate that was promoted from the 90s until now.

"Two years later, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over Congress for the first time in forty years, which was upsetting in and of itself. What made it worse was that the same Limbaugh character was their mouthpiece and mascot -- they even made him an honorary member of their freshman class. ... I kept noticing conservatives in the media saying things that were recklessly, provably false. ... Even worse, not only were they lying, there were even more liars than ever before, and on more platforms. They had Fox News. They had right-wing think tanks feeding pundits to other cable networks and publishing op-eds in the newspapers. They had the conservative Internet. They had this thing called Ann Coulter. They lied and lied and lied."

I know I've read about Newt's philosophy of politics as total war and personal destruction, bipartisanship as evil. It's not enough to win, the destruction and suffering of the enemy is the most important. But can't remember where.

Livingston, Hastert, Scarborough, the whole rotten bunch.

Softening and altering the language just enough to be acceptable at the time. If starting now he wouldn't feel need to soften nearly as much.

Beyond Trump I'd say Republicans are almost certain to nominate a string of Gingrich types. No chance they are going back to Dole or Romney or Bush types. They are going to want evil bastards who tone it down just slightly. I've seen it here in Florida with Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis. They'll keep exploring lowlife mode to find ones barely above the threshold not to be a large audience reject like Sharron Angle.

Gingrich hired pollsters, especially Luntz, to measure the political impact of specific wording. He found words which produced desired changes in opinions and used the most effective words regardless of truth. With Gingrich impact trumped truth. He accused political opponents of crimes solely because those charges swayed votes. He was a modern day pioneer in scientific Orwellianism.

Started long before that.

It began with Nixon's actions,impeachment. Became a thousand times worse under Reagan/ Bush with the traitorous trip of Bush to Iran, making a deal to hold the hostages until Reagan was sworn in.

You had Bill Barr covering up the dirty work of Iran/ Contra. Pardons for those involved. You see the same list of characters today carrying out the wet dreams of the same group. Gingrich just added to the vindictiveness.. There is such a long list of Republican dirty tricks you can not include them all. Going all the way back to Strom Thurmond and his Confederate co-horts.

It is now being said that Trump is the last Confederate President. I hope so but am not counting on it.

But, I believe it started long before Nixon.

The Democrats who became Republicans during the Civil rights era.

Roosevelt had his Haters,too. Remember? He actually said,” He welcomed their hate!”

Northeastern Republicans (the portion of the party that would eventually be called the Rockefeller Republicans) outmaneuvered hardline conservatives, making Eisenhower the nominee rather than Taft. This was a "stab in the back" moment for radical conservatives because they viewed the election as their big chance to finally dismantle the "tyrannical" and "socialist" New Deal. Taft would have fought to do that, but Ike accepted the basic ND framework, so young conservative zealots like Bill Buckley and Brent Bozell saw The Grand Prize yanked out of reach by supposed allies.

They spent the years afterward organizing a radical conservative core, and developing lines of argument and rationalization, like "liberal press bias" (which amounted to any bias, liberal or not, that wasn't theirs, or just failure to cheerlead their point of view).

Eight years after Ike and the northeastern Republicans pulled The Prize out of reach, it happened again when Kennedy beat Nixon. Thus began their obsession and mythologizing about the Chicago cemetery and its supposed voters. Nobody still around really knows what Mayor Daley did, or even whether he did anything, to tip the close Illinois election count in Kennedy's favor. However, since Daley's reputation was such that "did" was the way to bet, conservatives leaned hard into that and waved it around as a bloody shirt. It never mattered to them that even if Illinois had gone to Nixon, Kennedy still would have won. They had their opportunity to scream about how the election was "stolen" from them, and they've never, ever, given it up.

Redux in '64, when Goldwater lost. The was because of "liberal press bias", and "those damn northeastern Republicans turning outright traitor" to vote for Johnson.

By '68 the conservatives were primed and eager to use divide and conquer tactics to win, using the Southern Strategy, Law & Order, and Drug War tactics to bring out the bigotries and hates of their base. In the '70s, a new generation such as Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Terry Dolan, Jack Abramoff, and Gingrich himself cut their teeth and were ready to take this as a mere jumping off point and go much further.

I loathe that POS.

At the Vatican! Imagine.

I mean, the New York Times had an op-ed on this the other day, but it's news that has been fit to print for the entirety of the 21st century yet they only now got around to regurgitating what liberals have spent 25 years pre-chewing for them.

Remember, it was Republicans who coined the phrase "Tell Newt to shut up."

The only thing coming from Newt's mouth that should be taken at face value is vomit.

Speaker Jim Wright (D) had, I guess you would call a conflict of interest involving the bulk purchase of his book and speakers fees exceeding the limit permitted. Employing his wife was part of the problem too. House Minority leader Bob Michel (R) told Wright not to worry about it as he would not pursue it.

Newt went over the head of Michel and file charges against Wright, pissing off Michel. This would be the end of Jim Wright being speaker of the house. This would not be the only issue between Michel and Gingrich. Newt has been a lightning rod ever since and this is probably the start of his assent.