The Power Grab That Destroyed American Politics and How Newt Gingrich Created Our Modern Dysfunction (1 Viewer)

[Razoo]

But for Gingrich personally, there was an additional payoff: it got rid of knowledgeable congressional staffers who readily saw through his grandiose BS. As I've noted before, this has been pointed out by Bruce Bartlett, a top economic adviser to presidents Reagan and Bush I, in a piece titled "Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise," where he explained:

He [Gingrich] has always considered himself to be the smartest guy in the room and long chafed at being corrected by experts when he cooked up some new plan, over which he may have expended 30 seconds of thought, to completely upend and remake the health, tax or education systems.

Because Mr Gingrich does know more than most politicians, the main obstacles to his grandiose schemes have always been Congress’ professional staff members, many among the leading authorities anywhere in their areas of expertise.

To remove this obstacle, Mr Gingrich did everything in his power to dismantle Congressional institutions that employed people with the knowledge, training and experience to know a harebrained idea when they saw it.

When he became speaker in 1995, Mr Gingrich moved quickly to slash the budgets and staff of the House committees, which employed thousands of professionals with long and deep institutional memories....

In addition to decimating committee budgets, he also abolished two really useful Congressional agencies, the Office of Technology Assessment and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. The former brought high-level scientific expertise to bear on legislative issues and the latter gave state and local governments an important voice in Congressional deliberations."

Of course, the GOP had decades of no-nothing history before Newt Gingrich came along. But his evisceration of congressional expertise was something without parallel in American history.

The power grab that destroyed American politics: How Newt Gingrich created our modern dysfunction

In '94, the GOP used Contract with America to claim mandate for right-wing policies. It worked. Let's learn from it

www.salon.com

 

[Fishking]

But for Gingrich personally, there was an additional payoff: it got rid of knowledgeable congressional staffers who readily saw through his grandiose BS. As I've noted before, this has been pointed out by Bruce Bartlett, a top economic adviser to presidents Reagan and Bush I, in a piece titled "Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise," where he explained:

Of course, the GOP had decades of no-nothing history before Newt Gingrich came along. But his evisceration of congressional expertise was something without parallel in American history.

The power grab that destroyed American politics: How Newt Gingrich created our modern dysfunction

In '94, the GOP used Contract with America to claim mandate for right-wing policies. It worked. Let's learn from it

www.salon.com

You know...I was just thinking we don't have enough bureaucratic employees out there. Our government just doesn't have enough staffers and bootlickers for our political elite.

 

[Craig234]

Newt Gingrich is Sarah Palin's father, figuratively.

 

[Hamish Howl]

You know...I was just thinking we don't have enough bureaucratic employees out there. Our government just doesn't have enough staffers and bootlickers for our political elite.

The more you talk, the more I am convinced you know absolutely nothing about how the government functions.

 

[washunut]

But for Gingrich personally, there was an additional payoff: it got rid of knowledgeable congressional staffers who readily saw through his grandiose BS. As I've noted before, this has been pointed out by Bruce Bartlett, a top economic adviser to presidents Reagan and Bush I, in a piece titled "Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise," where he explained:










Of course, the GOP had decades of no-nothing history before Newt Gingrich came along. But his evisceration of congressional expertise was something without parallel in American history.

The power grab that destroyed American politics: How Newt Gingrich created our modern dysfunction

In '94, the GOP used Contract with America to claim mandate for right-wing policies. It worked. Let's learn from it

www.salon.com

How is it possible that Gingrich is so powerful that more than 20 years after he left power no one has been able to fix his terrible deeds.

 

[Fishking]

The more you talk, the more I am convinced you know absolutely nothing about how the government functions.

I'm super duper concerned about a comment from someone who never makes posts with any valid points, or even content at all.

 

[Hamish Howl]

I'm super duper concerned about a comment from someone who never makes posts with any valid points, or even content at all.

No, seriously, you say that you are in the military, but I bet we don't need all those PERSCOM assholes making sure your pay is right.

 

[Jay59]

But for Gingrich personally, there was an additional payoff: it got rid of knowledgeable congressional staffers who readily saw through his grandiose BS. As I've noted before, this has been pointed out by Bruce Bartlett, a top economic adviser to presidents Reagan and Bush I, in a piece titled "Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise," where he explained: Of course, the GOP had decades of no-nothing history before Newt Gingrich came along. But his evisceration of congressional expertise was something without parallel in American history.

The power grab that destroyed American politics: How Newt Gingrich created our modern dysfunction

In '94, the GOP used Contract with America to claim mandate for right-wing policies. It worked. Let's learn from it

www.salon.com

What a surprise. You find our political system functioning as designed is a problem, again.

The more you talk, the more I am convinced you know absolutely nothing about how the government functions.

Since you like OP we have proof that you do not understand how our government functions.

Then as now, the media would call out Republicans for minor infractions much more often than Democrats. That left Democrats much more exposed when the scandal came to light. Gingrich was very shrewd about the way he broke the scandal, but it was basically politics as usual. The big fish was Dan Rostenkowski who was using the House Post Office to launder bribe money. OP seems to have forgotten that point.

 

[OrphanSlug]

It is impossible to argue against the damage Newt Gingrich did to political discourse and legislative function in this nation. You could argue well that he intentionally made matters worse in order to concrete duopoly political establishment.

Literally advocating for us vs. them, just about all the time with rare exception.

The payoff was a centralization of monetary influence into politics with polarizing goals, and along two distinct corridors terminating at Republican or Democrat controls.

That is what enabled the power grab for the legislative branch to become less functional but more powerful blurring the lines between political advocacy and political appointment, the inclusion of being on staff for the purpose of actually writing legislative intention then when done going right back into the pool of groups who's sole purpose is to direct money into how a legislative vote is placed.

Money funneling to power, funneling to not just votes on legislative intentions but what is in the legislation being considered.

It was already happening anyway, long before Gingrich knew what he was missing out on. But he did in many regards codify the process and we are stuck with that revolving door today and you could also argue Gingrich made more violent the political pendulum going back and forth Republican to Democrat (Presidential and Congressional controls.) The more extreme the result, the more moderates and independents stay home or vote for the other team.

I am sure Gingrich is happy with what he accomplished, largely being a hypocrite all along the way, but he damaged this nation in a way we might not be able to repair.