“The person most responsible for injecting that virulent strain of partisanship into the Republican party was another dethroned House Speaker — Newt Gingrich. The firebrand conservative leaders today are Gingrich’s children. Gingrich rose to power in the 1980s as the pied piper of a new assertive conservatism that merged the moralistic rhetoric of the New Right, and the mystical conservative faith in tax cuts, into a powerful ideological message. It was Gingrich who manufactured the hyper-partisanship that defines modern politics.”

I remember the Gingrich Revolution all too well! It happened just as I became interested in politics. It made me so sick that I came very close to swearing off politics forever. Luckily, I realized that cynicism was not the answer. To this day I feel sick every time I see Newt. While I don’t think Newt is solely responsible for the nasty and dysfunctional state of politics today, but I agree with Steven M. Gillon that he bears a large share of the responsibility.

Read the entire article here: History News Network | The Gingrich Revolution and the Roots of Republican Dysfunction