Reaganite Or Opportunist?

Newt Gingrich has rode to prominence by wrapping himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan and promoting himself as the most viable conservative alternative in the Republican field to squishy moderate Mitt Romney.

Elliot Abrams, a former Assistant Secretary of State under Reagan and colleague of Newt's in the House of Representatives, remembers things considerably differently, however:

In the increasingly rough Republican campaign, no candidate has wrapped himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan more often than Newt Gingrich. “I worked with President Reagan to change things in Washington,” “we helped defeat the Soviet empire,” and “I helped lead the effort to defeat Communism in the Congress” are typical claims by the former speaker of the House.

The claims are misleading at best. As a new member of Congress in the Reagan years — and I was an assistant secretary of state — Mr. Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism. Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.

The fights over Reagan’s efforts to stop Soviet expansionism in the Third World were exceptionally bitter .... But the most bitter battleground was often in Congress.

Here at home, we faced vicious criticism from leading Democrats — Ted Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, Jim Wright, Tip O’Neill, and many more — who used every trick in the book to stop Reagan by denying authorities and funds to these efforts. On whom did we rely up on Capitol Hill? There were many stalwarts: Henry Hyde, elected in 1974; Dick Cheney, elected in 1978, the same year as Gingrich; Dan Burton and Connie Mack, elected in 1982; and Tom DeLay, elected in 1984, were among the leaders.

But not Newt Gingrich. He voted with the caucus, but his words should be remembered, for at the height of the bitter struggle with the Democratic leadership Gingrich chose to attack . . . Reagan.

Abrams goes on to explain how Gingrich attacked Reagan.

It's really quite remarkable that a man who said the sort of things about Reagan that Abrams imputes to Newt, a president of his own party under relentless assault by the Left, would now claim to be the modern incarnation of the man himself. The more one reads about the Newtster the more one understands why so many conservatives not only don't support him, but actively oppose him.