Newt! By Jamil Shawwa

In 1992, presidential elections, America elected Bill Clinton as president and dumped the first gulf war victorious president, George H.W. Bush. In the 1994 midterm congressional elections, America decided to give Bill Clinton a reality check, as it usually does to setting presidents in midterm’s elections, and for Congress, moved the majority to the Republican Party. The Republican Party never forgave America for electing   someone with a reputation, the unknown, the nobody, then, Bill Clinton, and for the humiliating defeat of their respectable Bush. The GOP flew to the majority on what they called then the republican revolution, similar to the one that came to existence after the election of Barack Obama in 2008. The leader of that political pragmatic revolution was an unknown politician from the sixth district in the state of Georgia by the name of Newt Gingrich. Gringrich, the history professor, took on his part to defeat Clinton, and he did it actually in a way that is being studied by politicians from all over the world, as to what not to do; the revolution failed miserably. Newt hoping to embarrass the setting president, went on a stubborn budget rhetoric and shut down the federal government, Congress stopped funding, employees were sent home, and the American people walk up with their country, the strongest on earth, paralyzed in political rhetoric and settling old accounts and working along party lines; America could not stand Newt, his party or his revolution. In 1996, the American people sent a huge blow to Newt and his comic revolution and sent him and his party home, reelected Bill Clinton- coming fresh out of the Monica Lewinsky affair. Newt went into the shadows, divorced his wife and married his assistance. George W. Bush was elected in 2000, in part as a vindication to the defeat of his father, but in bigger part, because of the no skilled and annoying demeanor of his challenger, the ever boring, Al Gore. Since then and until now, Newt has been irrelevant, on the sidelines, someone whom almost all considered as a has been, a footnote in the history of American politics, a loser, to many. I personally thought that he is done, and this might still stand. But Newt is emerging, not because of his talents, although he might still have some to rise anyway, after that failed political movement that he called a revolution. Newt is rising because of the soundly unimaginative candidates that the Republican Party is displaying now. Romney the Mormon that no one likes according to Time magazine cover on 12/12/2011, Perry, Texas Trophy Boy, proved that he has an issue with brain brightness, when he could not spell out the names of the departments that he wanted to eliminate to save a dollar or two, and last, among the serious candidates, Herman Cane and his stupid cover-up, did not learn from Dick Nixon’s Watergate, of extramarital affairs that he kept denying until he could not, and  was thrown out of the race. Newt is taking it easy, no large staff, no budget, no fundraising, and nothing, no one expected Newt to be anybody, again. But Newt is rising by the powers of lady luck and the power of the moment. He is not chasing history, Newt, the history professor from 6th sixth district in Georgia, History, this time, is chasing Newt.