Newt Gingrich lead the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994 and was “demonized” by the Democrats for his success. The level of hatred Newt inspires in the left is wonderfully summarized in the Boot Newt Songbook. His sudden resignation from Congress in November 1998 prompted a wide range of responses including David Horowitz’s assessment that … “he's not really a politician. He's more of a rebel than a statesman. He is full of ideas and they pop out of him all the time.”
I have a fondness for rebels with ideas even if not every idea turns out to be brilliant. The old History Professor is currently out promoting his latest bound volume of collected musings and a few weeks ago Harvard actually allowed him onto campus to give a talk. People study the past because you can’t study the future. The transcript is from the “official site of the former Speaker of the House” and this small section caught my fancy.
Harvard Speech: “Here's my proposition to all of you. We are about to face the largest scale of challenge we have had since 1980. The political, governmental system in the United States is not capable of developing answers internally, and never has been. There's not a single major movement in American politics that starts in Washington. … Everyone one of them starts first in the countryside with people talking to each other. And mostly it's common sense.”
