Why was gingrich ousted as speaker

Even when the Democratic Party was hit with a political earthquake in , and Tom Foley became the first speaker to lose his House seat in a re-election run since , the Democratic members did not overthrow the rest of the team — Majority Leader Dick Gephardt stepped right up to serve as Democratic Leader.

The Democrats have been so serious about an orderly leadership that when John Murtha with the considerable backing of Nancy Pelosi tried to jump the line in by running for Majority Leader against Steny Hoyer, Murtha was crushed nearly two-to-one. Boehner will probably be burning up the phone lines this weekend, as he works to solidify the votes for his re-election as speaker. Despite his recent legislative failure and his perceived shaky hold over his caucus, Boehner seems to be in a strong position to retain his job.

But, if he's thinking at all about history, he would be right to take any ouster attempt seriously. Joshua Spivak is a senior fellow at the Hugh L. He writes the Recall Elections Blog. Editor's note: This story originally misreported multiple dates.

They have since been corrected. We regret the errors. Ron DeSantis stated on October 22, a Facebook post:. Tom Cotton stated on October 21, a tweet:. Joe Biden stated on October 21, a town hall in Baltimore:. Joe Biden stated on October 6, remarks at the White House:. It has nothing to do with new spending. Facebook posts stated on October 5, social media posts:.

Two years ago today, we were experiencing the greatest economy in the history of the world. Facebook posts stated on September 27, social media posts:. Joe Biden stated on October 5, a speech in Howell, Mich. You know where we are today? Bryan Steil stated on October 28, in Twitter:. Joe Biden stated on November 3, in a news conference. Dennis Prager stated on November 8, in an interview with Newsmax:.

Viral image stated on November 6, in a Facebook post:. By Robin Opsahl. Capitol in Washington. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert , R-Ill. Wikimedia Commons. Speaker William Brockman Bankhead. Public Domain. Loading the player On election night, Republicans packed into a ballroom in the Atlanta suburbs , waving placards that read liberals, your time is up! Grinning out at the audience, he announced that a package had just arrived at the White House with some Tylenol in it. T he freshman Republicans who entered Congress in January were lawmakers created in the image of Newt: young, confrontational, and determined to inflict radical change on Washington.

From the creation of interstate highways to the passage of civil-rights legislation, the most significant, lasting acts of Congress have been achieved by lawmakers who deftly maneuver through the legislative process and work with members of both parties. On January 4, Speaker Gingrich gaveled Congress into session, and promptly got to work transforming America.

Determined to keep Republicans in power, Gingrich reoriented the congressional schedule around filling campaign war chests, shortening the official work week to three days so that members had time to dial for dollars. There had been federal funding lapses before, but they tended to be minor affairs that lasted only a day or two. The gambit was a bust—voters blamed the GOP for the crisis, and Gingrich was castigated in the press—but it ensured that the shutdown threat would loom over every congressional standoff from that point on.

Over the course of several secret meetings at the White House in the fall of , Gingrich told me, he and Clinton sketched out plans for a center-right coalition that would undertake big, challenging projects such as a wholesale reform of Social Security.

Never mind that Republicans had no real chance of getting the impeachment through the Senate. He thought he was enshrining a new era of conservative government.

In fact, he was enshrining an attitude—angry, combative, tribal—that would infect politics for decades to come. In the years since he left the House, Gingrich has only doubled down. Mickey Edwards, the Oklahoma Republican, who served in the House for 16 years, told me he believes Gingrich is responsible for turning Congress into a place where partisan allegiance is prized above all else.

He noted that during Watergate, President Richard Nixon was forced to resign only because leaders of his own party broke ranks to hold him accountable—a dynamic Edwards views as impossible in the post-Gingrich era. Newt has been a big part of eroding that. But when I ask Gingrich what he thinks of the notion that he played a part in toxifying Washington, he bristles.

These days, Gingrich seems to be revising his legacy in real time—shifting the story away from the ideological sea change that his populist disruption was supposed to enable, and toward the act of populist disruption itself. On December 19, , Gingrich cast his final vote as a congressman—a vote to impeach Bill Clinton for lying under oath about an affair.

By the time it was revealed that the ex-speaker had been secretly carrying on an illicit relationship with a young congressional aide named Callista throughout his impeachment crusade, almost no one was surprised. Gingrich declined to comment on these allegations. Detractors could call it hypocrisy if they wanted; Gingrich might not even argue. The CNN moderator grew flustered, the audience erupted in a standing ovation, and a few days later, the voters of South Carolina delivered Gingrich a decisive victory in the Republican primary.

One of the hard things about talking with Gingrich is that he weaves partisan attack lines into casual conversation so matter-of-factly—and so frequently—that after a while they begin to take on a white-noise quality.

His smarter-than-thou persona seems so impenetrable, his mind so unchangeable, that after a while you just give up on anything approaching a regular human conversation.

But the zoo appears to have put Gingrich in high spirits, and for the first time all day, he seems relaxed, loose, even a little gossipy. When Trump first began thinking seriously about running for president, he turned to Gingrich for advice. Over breakfast at the downtown Marriott, Trump peppered Newt and Callista with questions about running for president—most pressingly, how much it would cost him to fund a campaign through the South Carolina primary.

This would be a lot more fun than a yacht! Once Trump clinched the nomination, he rewarded Gingrich by putting him on the vice-presidential short list. For a while it looked like it might really happen. Gingrich had the support of influential inner-circlers like Sean Hannity, who flew him out on a private jet to meet with Trump on the campaign trail.

But alas, a Trump-Gingrich ticket was not to be. There were, it turned out, certain optical issues that would have proved difficult to spin.

In fact, according to a transition official, Gingrich had little interest in giving up his lucrative private-sector side hustles, and was never really in the running for a Cabinet position. Gingrich disputes this account. In Washington, the appointment was seen as a testament to the self-parodic nature of the Trump era—but in Rome, the arrangement has worked surprisingly well.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Gingrich got to work marketing himself as the premier public intellectual of the Trump era.