By Brigitte L. Nacos
With all attention focused on Mitt Romney’s income and taxes, Newt Gingrich has gotten a free ride after disclosing his and his wife’s 2010 tax returns. The adjusted gross income of $3.1 million that Mr. and Mrs. Gingrich reported is significantly lower than what the Romneys collected--mostly in capital gains. But making more than $3 million a year is not chopped liver either. The same is true for the total assets of the new Republican frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination. It has been long known that Romney’s wealth amounts to $250 million or so. But totally lost in the have versus have-not debate is the considerable wealth of Newt and Callista Gingrich—according to Newt Gingrich’s recent disclosure between $7.3 million and $38 million. While $7.3 million is quite a nest egg and might explain Mrs. Gingrich’s preference for Tiffany jewelry, it is utterly amazing to report a more than $30 million gap between the lowest and highest estimate of total assets.
But whether $7 million or $38 million in his name and regardless of Matt Romney’s greater wealth, Newt Gingrich is a very wealthy man—part of the one-percent financial elite.
And while Gingrich hammers Romney for the ways in which his rival made hundreds of millions of dollars as the head of Bain Capital, he continues to deny that he made his own fortune as political insider, influence peddler, and unregistered lobbyist. To describe his $300,000 a year fee from Freddie Mac, an agency in the midst of the mortgage scandal, first as compensation for his role as historian and then as a strategist comes down to what he easily accuses his political opponents of—not telling the truth. Such phony explanations are insults to everyone else’s common sense.
So, the real Gingrich is a wealthy man who made his fortune as a political influence peddler. Yet, he has succeeded in convincing a growing number of Americans that he is fighting for the common man, for the common interest. That he is the man of the people and for the people. Gingrich speaks the language of and courts members and sympathizers of the populist Tea Party movement. Central to the populist message is faith in the goodness and rightness of ordinary citizens and the idea that the common sense of the common man trumps the views and judgment of elites. Not surprisingly, Tea Partiers have justified their cause by revisiting the grievances and demands expressed by Thomas Paine during the build-up to the American Revolution in his famous pamphlet “Common Sense,” a title that Tea Party patron Glenn Beck borrowed to attack what he alleged to be an out-of-control federal government. Gingrich himself identified early on President Obama and liberals as the greatest threat. Shortly after the birth of the Tea Party, Gingrich said, “People have a growing awareness that the combination of the Obama administration and left-wing Democrats who dominate the Congress means a genuine threat to everything about their life.”
Have you noted that Gingrich does not speak of President Obama, just Obama, thereby signaling the extreme right’s view that the president is illegitimate—not born in the U.S., not a Christian, un-American. Like every populist, Gingrich appeals to the emotions, to the fears, the anger, the frustration of people; he overstates; he disregards the truth—everything to manifest and widen a “fundamental” gap between “we” (the good) and “them” (the bad).
He attacks the power elite—establishment politicians and the media—and makes believe that he is not profiting from his ties to the former and not playing ball with the latter for the sake of communicating his divisive messages.
Gingrich on stage is very good as populist. He is very good as demagogue. And he is very dangerous.
Michael Gerson, President George W. Bush’s top-speechwriter and senior policy adviser, spelled that danger out in a recent op-ed article in the Washington Post. Discussing Gingrich’s attack on the judiciary, Gerson cites Michael Mukasey, attorney general during the Bush presidency, who commented on Gingrich’s challenge by warning that America would become a “banana republic, in which administrations would become regimes, and each regime would feel it perfectly appropriate to disregard decisions by courts staffed by previous regimes.”
Gerson concludes, “This is a presidential candidate promising a constitutional crisis…” [emphasis added].
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