David Frum was on the Ed Show yesterday noting how Newt Gingrich’s apparent desire to run for president in 2012 has led him to try to out-Palin Palin and thus put the pedal to the metal on the bus to Crazy ™ Town in his recent claims that President Obama is a latter-day African tribesman pursuing an “anti-colonial” agenda or even that the president is clinically insane. (Remember, only a year ago he was holding out with an endorsement of fairly liberal and now former Republican Dede Scozzafava in upstate New York. He probably still feels singed by getting out of step on that one and is trying to make up for it.)
But when I was thinking about this it occurred to me that in the old days when people talked about the ‘liberal’ Gingrich era they were referring to his early and failed attempts to run for Congress in the mid-70s as a Rockefeller type Republican with a vaguely pro-environmental stance. But compared to today, the ‘liberal’ Gingrich probably means 1995-1999.
