<div class="header">
<div class="left">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" align="left" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"></a><br clear="all"></div></div><hr align="left" size="1">
<div class="timestamp">May 11, 2011</div>
<h1>Mr. Gingrich’s Intolerant History</h1>
<div id="articleBody">
<p>
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and latest entrant in the
Republican presidential field, has money, experience and name
recognition. His <a title="YouTube video" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRSz21Vedxc">introductory video</a>
is all serenity and hope, a deceptively calm way for many voters to
meet a splenetic politician with a long history of slashing divisiveness
and intolerance. </p>
<p>
He refers to himself as a historian, but apparently his personal study
of history has primarily taught him about the effectiveness of demagogy.
Donald Trump, fiddling with birth certificates, is an amateur compared
with Mr. Gingrich at sliming the Obama administration — as well as
Democrats, Muslims, blacks and gay men and lesbians. </p>
<p>
The Democrats who won in 2008, including President Obama, are “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine,” <a href="http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37194394/ns/today-books/t/gingrich-left-redefining-american/">he wrote in his 2010 book</a>,
“To Save America.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political
corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then the inevitable
historical coup de grâce: “The secular-socialist machine represents as
great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”
</p>
<p>
The slurs don’t stop there. He compared the Muslims who wanted to open
an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan to the German Reich, <a title="NYT report" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/us/politics/15reaction.html">saying</a>
it “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.” He
is promoting the fringe idea that “jihadis” are intent on imposing
Islamic law on every American village and farm. </p>
<p>
Last year, <a title="AEI speech" href="http://www.aei.org/docLib/Address%20by%20Newt%20Gingrich07292010.pdf">he called for a federal law</a>
to stop the (nonexistent) onslaught of Sharia on American jurisprudence
and accused the left of refusing to acknowledge its “mortal threat to
the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know
it.” This nuanced grasp of world affairs was reinforced when <a title="National Review interview" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/246302/gingrich-obama-s-kenyan-anti-colonial-worldview-robert-costa">he said that Mr. Obama</a> displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” </p>
<p>
In his world, advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment, blacks have <a href="http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19950616&slug=2126720">little entrepreneurial tradition</a>, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/SoniaSotomayor/story?id=7685284">Latina woman racist</a>.” (He kind of took back that last slur.) </p>
<p>
Despite all this, not to mention <a title="NYT report" href="http://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/1222gingrich-ethics.html?scp=1&sq=gingrich%20ethics&st=cse">the ethics violation</a>
when he was speaker, Mr. Gingrich’s real liability among the
conservative and fundamentalist groups that dominate the Republican
primaries is his personal <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2937633&page=1">history of infidelity</a>
that led to two sordid divorces. (Much of which took place while he was
denouncing President Bill Clinton for moral transgressions.) That may
explain his endless calls to <a title="WSJ report" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576271263380723514.html">restore Judeo-Christian values</a>. </p>
<p>
It is sometimes difficult to know what some Republican candidates stand
for, as they pander to the far right without alienating the center. It
is not difficult to know what Newt Gingrich stands for, and to find it
repellent. </p>
<div class="articleCorrection">
</div>
</div>