COMMENTARY | As was seen and heard on NBC's "Meet The Press" Sunday, presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich sees himself as anti-establishment. His rival, Mitt Romney, is an establishment candidate, he says. But how can that be when Newt Gingrich worked in Washington for 20 years as a congressman, including six as the House Minority Whip and four as Speaker of the House? He also worked for over a decade after resigning from Congress as a top-billing consultant and advisor to corporations and federal agencies looking to shore their particular positions in political circles. And that's anti-establishment?
But that is what he said.
"In Florida my case is going to be very simple," Gingrich said. "You have a clear establishment candidate in Mitt Romney. … And you have somebody whose entire career has been a Reagan populist conservative."
But Gingrich projects so as to distract the Republican electorate: If there has been a candidate more indicative of the establishment Americans have been railing against for years, it is Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich. He is, if anything, the walking epitome of political establishment and non-populist governance.
To further establish his anti-establishment credentials, Gingrich spoke to the mortgage crisis that had hit Florida especially hard. "As they look at the big boys on Wall Street they look at the guys in Washington," he told "Meet The Press, "they know none of that help got down to average everyday Floridians. And I think that gap creates a real anger against the national establishment."
But some of that popular anger might be well spent directed at "national establishment" representatives and spokespeople like Newt Gingrich. The former Speaker of the House was part of the Republican-majority Congress that in the late 90s pushed legislation that weakened and/or eliminated regulatory provisions of the Glass-Steagal Act that had stood since 1932 against banks and financial speculatory organizations (from combining their financial houses). Although he left before the last major block was eliminated in late 1999, he helped forge the deregulatory policies that would allow financial dealings that ultimately resulted in the subprime mortgage crisis. He later wrote a position paper supporting Freddie Mac, an independent federally funded financial agency whose lending practices were at the center of the mortgage crisis.
Sure, Romney might be part of the financial establishment, but he used his business acumen and lax regulations to make his fortune (something which, oddly enough, Gingrich said in an interview on CNBC that he, as a congressman when the favorable legislation passed, should be thanked for). But he certainly is no Washington insider, no matter how much Gingrich would like to make him one. And yet, thirty years inside the Beltway and dealing with those that do business in the nation's capital seem to indicate that Gingrich is exactly what he maintains he is not.
Moreover, it is the influence on Congress from "outside" parties like Gingrich's consulting firm that has helped Congress to its lowest job approval ratings in history (11 percent, per Gallup). In a poll conducted in April, Gallup found that 71 percent of Americans surveyed said that they believed lobbyists had too much power.
Gingrich's words can be explained by his desire to continue the momentum shift experienced by his campaign for the GOP nomination. Fresh off of a victory in the South Carolina Primary, the former Speaker has become intent on erasing Romney's poll lead in Florida by the time that state's primary is held (Jan. 31). Counting on the general ignorance of the electorate, not to mention time's ability to make past actions easily dismissible, Gingrich has gone on the offensive.
He's done it by describing a politician that the electorate would take a quick dislike toward.
And that politician -- save for the Wall Street reference -- is him.
Newt Gingrich might argue that he is many things, but anti-establishment is one that stretches credulity to the breaking point.
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