Gingrich, Fascism, and Sarah Palin

Does anyone remember Newt Gingrich (R-GA)? That Republican Speaker of the House who went away in shame ten years ago after some serious Republican losses and personal scandals? The vacuum in leadership in the Republican Party is allowing an opening again for Gingrich to re-surface. He even toyed with the idea of offering himself up as the Republican candidate for President this year, but it didn’t materialize. Now, he seems to be trying to step into a leadership role in the party as it struggles to find a leader and a message.

The Republican Party is in danger of fracturing right down the middle into a party with two factions and two messages. Newt Gingrich is promoting a far right social conservatism agenda taking positions much like those we heard from Sarah Palin, former Vice-Presidential candidate. Social conservatism is an ideology that believes that government has a role in enforcing traditional morals or beliefs on individuals based on the belief that these traditional beliefs keep people civilized and adhering to traditional family values. Social conservatives are usually pro-life; they oppose secularism and privatization of religious beliefs; they are against gay marriage or any type of civil partnerships. Social conservatives oppose any kind of radical social change that would depose the values held by the traditional nuclear family social structure. Social conservatives tend to violently oppose any value system other than their own.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with a social conservative point of view, unless it falls off the scale to the right. Gingrich took a position of far right social conservatism in an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News on November 14. Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

 O'REILLY: OK, now, the culture war. I know you've been flying around the country, and you're doing stuff. In the last three or four days, this is really nasty stuff. I mean, you know, hyper -- we're gonna show you some of the video. A woman getting a cross smashed out of her hand. We had a church in Michigan invaded by gay activists. We're gonna show you the video on Monday of that -- we have exclusively. We had a guy in Sacramento fired from his job. We had boycotts called on restaurants.

   I mean, it is getting out of control, very few days after the election. How do you assess that?

   GINGRICH: Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And, frank -- for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school.

Gingrich seems to be trying to secure his place in the Republican Party as a far right candidate for 2012. Of course, Sarah Palin wants her place in the same position, though she may have been deterred when Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) lost his bid for re-election to the Senate. By all accounts, she was prepared to run for Steven’s seat in the Senate when he was ejected from the Senate since he is a convicted felon. That, of course, would only work if Stevens had been re-elected.

The fracture in the Republican Party comes when you think about some of the younger members of the Republican Party, primarily some of the governors, who are in favor of a different agenda for the party as expressed at the recent Republican Governors Association meeting in Florida. The Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty, wants the Republican Party to move forward and become something other than the party of older white men. He wants the party to become more inclusive of black voters, younger voters, and Latino voters and for the party to become more modern. Other Republican governor’s agree including Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Governor Charlie Crist of Florida. It seems that this branch of the Republican Party is economically conservative but not necessarily socially conservative.

How will these two branches of the Republican Party resolve their issues into a cohesive platform? Gingrich acknowledges that Palin will be a force in the party but not the only force. She is likely to be his competition in 2012, unless she decides to wait for six years and run for the Senate. Both of them would run on a far right platform of social conservatism. Then, we have Pawlenty, Crist, Jindal, and other Republican governors and some Senators wanting to modernize the Republican Party. Some of them are likely to be candidates in 2012 for the presidency and run on a more inclusive, modern Republican platform that is economically conservative but not as socially conservative.

When Gingrich accuses value systems other than his own of being fascism, he is setting himself up to fill that position of that far right candidate in direct competition with Sarah Palin, even though she has never directly used the word “fascism” to describe a value system other than her own. It will be interesting to watch the younger members of the Republican Party try to reinvent itself and find a more modern and inclusive message with Gingrich pushing for a leadership position with a radical socially conservatism position.