Newt for Speaker!

The last few days, we've been contemplating the resignation of John Boehner as Speaker of the House, and the implications for the Republican Party, for the conservative movement, for the USA and, frankly, for the world.  Of course, it is not simply that he will soon be gone -- it isn't that at all.  His presence seemed so inconsequential that his absence will barely be noticed.

Save, of course, of the vacancy and the fillage thereof.

Back a few months, when I analyzed how I would want to choose which presidential candidate I would support most vigorously, I put a lot of stress on communication as a leadership trait.  "Communication", as in being the public face of the principles for which he or she would be speaking, so that the public would get the message from someone with the capability of making a compelling case.

Why?  Because we have critical issues.  We have $20 trillion in debt and it is increasing; ISIS is on our borders, which are leaky where they even exist; Obamacare is crushing business; the labor participation rate is low and getting lower.  Our cities are a disaster and they keep reelecting the leftist mayors who got them that way -- and are keeping them that way.

That's where we start.  The Democrats have shown no capability to solve, well, any problem -- but they own the press, and so get a pass as they cling to power.  So for the conservative right even to get the chance to show what it can do, it needs to be led by someone who can go to the public and make the case.

That is true of the Speaker's office every bit as much as the presidency, particularly when the White House is of the other party.  When a leftist Democrat is president, it falls to a Republican Speaker to articulate the reasoning behind the legislation he proposes, supports, or is pressing.

And that has not been John Boehner.  Boehner, whatever he may have done in the privacy of his office meeting with allies and opponents, forgot that he was, ex officio, the official public face of what the Republican agenda was to be.  He needed -- especially with the press not on the side of his agenda -- to make his case to the public the best he could.

But John Boehner either had no stomach for the role, or never realized it was part of the job.  Perhaps, had he been dealing with a Republican president, the role might have suited him better, but there wasn't -- and it didn't.  Believing that his job was simply to do the best he could with the caucus as it was, he went along to get along.  And the USA suffered because of it.

Now we are engaged in a great pursuit of the Speaker's office, and before we decide who that should be, we should decide what we need.  And that, friends, is the leader of the conservative legislative agenda. Because that's the opposition to the White House, that person must be able to lead, and also make the case in public -- "Here is what we want to do, here is how we will do it, here is why we are doing it, and here is where it has worked before."

Who can do that?  Who can get the press coverage against a cynical, leftist press?  And who is brilliant enough to "get" every aspect of both the legislative, the political and the PR battle?  Well, there are probably a few, including more than one currently running for the presidency.  But I have the logical candidate.

That would be the former Speaker, the Hon. Newton Leroy Gingrich.

As everyone should know by now, the Speaker does not need to be a sitting congressman; that has only been a tradition and does not reflect the Constitution.  Newt was the Speaker; Lord knows he understands the role.  He is unquestionably brilliant, with immense command of the issues.  But most importantly, he is a fabulous speaker who understands, after a long career, the importance of making the case for a legislative agenda to the public.

We know, in his seventies, he would see the job as the architect of a time-bound legislative correction -- in fact, were a Republican to become president after the 2016 elections, he could readily step down and back into private life, and hand the job over to someone with comparable skills.

The press would not have such an easy time with Newt Gingrich, since he is smarter than pretty much all of them, so they would try to rip the heck out of him.  But he has been through worse, and surely has the ability to get his messages past the firewall of the leftist media.

I like the idea.  In fact, even talking about the possibility is something that the Republicans need, getting away from their introspective mindset and toward getting the message out to the voter.

Now the former Speaker needs to consider coming back.

 Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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