Gingrich Campaign Press Release - Why the Establishment Fears Newt Gingrich

Former Pennsylvania Congressman Bob Walker writes in the Washington Post why the establishment fears Newt's record as a conservative reformer.

After Newt Gingrich rose in the polls, criticism of the former House speaker began grabbing headlines. But Republican establishment attacks on Newt are not new. Newt's political career has been devoted to mounting a conservative challenge to the establishment's desire to play the Washington power game of go along to get along.

As a junior congressman, Newt founded the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS), a group of activist members of Congress whose goal was to challenge the liberal welfare state but whose first target was the Republican establishment in the House of Representatives. The "old bulls" who dominated the party in the House had become quite comfortable in their minority status and saw little chance they would ever become a majority. Newt and the COS knew that, to create a true conservative agenda, the party needed to focus on becoming a majority. We used the House floor and C-SPAN to promote our ideas. We attacked spending bills and efforts to expand government, some of which the establishment had endorsed. It reacted by telling newly elected members to stay away from those COS guys because they are trouble.

Newt really stirred up establishment backlash by taking on then-Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) for ethics violations. The further Newt pushed his case against Wright, the more uncomfortable establishment leaders became. When Newt won, they leaned more toward agreeing with Wright's characterization of the result as "cannibalism" rather than seeing it as a victory for Republicans against an increasingly corrupt majority.

In 1989 Newt scored a stunning victory over the establishment candidate to win the job of Republican whip. It was a hard-fought battle decided by one vote. But that victory meant that the party was moving toward a conservative activist profile, shedding its passive minority attitude.

Newt really upset the establishment when he refused to go along with the tax increases that had been engineered in negotiations between Congress and the George H.W. Bush administration. Party leaders put him on the negotiating team in an effort to neutralize him. Instead, Newt made it clear that he would not accept tax increases and his message to President Bush was that tax increases would destroy his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. When the negotiations produced new taxes, Newt refused to sign on and led the Republican opposition to the settlement in the House. To this day, establishment figures harbor a grudge against Newt for not joining their "revenue enhancement" conspiracy.

Read the whole column here.