This edition of The Atlantic Monthly has an interesting article on Speaker Gingrich, who they point out correctly was always more of a futurist than a conservative. I’m not going to reprint it here, and I’m afraid many Republicans will be loath to actually walk down to the newstand and purchase this kind of magazine. See, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Harpers are sort of “pornography” in the Republican activist community – material you wouldn’t want anyone seeing you purchse. I get my copies in a brown paper bag, sent to a PO box under the psuedoname Smitty Von Trap. The article also points the reader over to the Speaker’s website www.newt.org, which is worth taking a gander at.
I’ve always sort of viewed Gingrich and Delay – who were not exactly kiss on the mouth friends – as two necessary componants of our party… sort of a Janus type deal with two opposite heads. I viewed Gingrich as the idealist, the ‘big idea’ man who kept the Revolution from stagnancy… who kept our ideas fresh and forward thinking even if sometimes he sounded like your uncle the inventor after a couple of pops on a warm Easter morning. And Delay was the more practical ‘operator’ who consolidated the the Revolution – who made sure that we stayed in control. His focus was on the mechanics of keeping the GOP in power.
But as Assemblyman Wyland is fond of repeating to me time and time again, control for control’s sake doesn’t mean too much, and is certainly not going to bring the idealess GOP the kind of long-term realignment various articles attribute as the main desire of “operative” types through history… types like Rove or Hannah or Delay. A party needs big ideas, whether in the minority or majority. A party needs to demonstrate that it is more than a ‘machine’ mindlessly re-electing individuals merely because they happen to have an R or D behind their name. And in reverse, a party of ideas still needs the electoral ‘machine’ to let it hold or gain majority.