Tuesday night Newt Gingrich went on Brit Hume’s new show on Fox News. Gingrich is a fascinating interview because, whatever his eccentricities, he’s a visionary and one of the major figures of the last century of American politics. If you want to see full-bore Gingrich, go and take in his long Conversation with Bill Kristol. You’ll be blown away.
But in his four-minute exchange with Hume last night, Gingrich was . . . not himself. Probably that’s because he was there to serve as a cheerleader for Donald Trump, which is a task that never leaves a man covered in glory.
First, Hume asked Gingrich if conservatism as we knew it a year ago would come back. To which Gingrich blithely replied “Probably not.” “You’re seeing a genuine evolution into a new set of issues, a new set of principles,” he explained. As an example of these new principles, Gingrich said that the new conservatism would have “a very relentless, ruthless attitude” toward “putting America first.”
And the examples he gave on that score were questioning trade deals and the NATO alliance.
(Gingrich has spent his career as a persuasive supporter of free markets and muscular American leadership in foreign affairs.)
Gingrich then told Hume that there’s a divide between older conservatives, who view America as a rich country that can do anything it wants, and younger conservatives, who realize that we’re diminished and have scant resources.
At which point Hume said, wait a minute, Trump’s about to announce a giant new entitlement. How does that jibe with a view of America as a country with diminished resources? Gingrich couldn’t square that circle.
Hume then asked Gingrich if this new entitlement is “conservative.” Gingrich wouldn’t answer. Hume asked if this program doesn’t sound like something a Democrat would offer. Gingrich again ducked that question too, before uncorking this: “[Trump] represents the same tradition of conservatism as Churchill and Thatcher.” After months of having conservatives insist that Trump was just like Reagan, it seems as though we’re upgrading him. By October, some Trump supporter will probably argue that he’s just like Pope John Paul II.
Hume then asked Gingrich, “You as a conservative, are you fine with what Donald Trump says about Vladimir Putin, for example?”
After dancing around for a minute, Gingrich replied: “I’m not particularly bothered by what Mr. Trump is saying.”
Hold the phone: “Mr. Trump”?
Finally, Hume asked Gingrich if Trump loses, which branch of conservatism—normal conservatism or the Trumpian stuff—would be the party’s path back to power. To which Gingrich started out by saying that “You’re going to see a permanent upsurge against Washington government.”
And then, a few seconds later, Gingrich suggested that we already have a glimpse of the Trumpian future of conservatism: “One of the people who’s running one of the best races in the country is Rob Portman. I think you’d see a new generation, with new ideas.”
Sit with that for a minute. Rob Portman was first elected to the House in 1993, then became George W. Bush’s trade rep (back when our trade deals were “the worst deals”), then his director of OMB, and finally a U.S. senator. This man’s entire life has been as a creature of the Washington establishment. He makes Jeb Bush look like a radical outsider. And he’s the new generation of Trumpian conservatism that Gingrich sees as the future of the Republican party.
The entire interview is kind of amazing because I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gingrich so thoroughly dismantled. Then again, this is what happens. No one’s ever looked smarter after signing on with Trump.
And of course the biggest mystery is this: Put aside the logical inconsistencies, if everything Gingrich said about the future of conservatism was so obvious—and so obviously to the good—then why didn’t Gingrich make it the basis of his presidential campaign four years ago?
