Our first political terrorist in the modern era speaks....

[JHB]

14. Yes, I do recall, and it was his fellow Republicans who coined the phrase...

Last edited Thu Oct 25, 2018, 09:18 PM - Edit history (1)

..."Tell Newt to shut up!" But my recollection is that while the other things created turbulence for him, they weren't the linchpin. If Starr's investigation had turned up anything solid enough to truly bring Clinton down, Newt could have brazened it out and weathered the storm, just like he always did.

But once the writing was on the wall that what Starr had was nothing close to what the Senate would accept as grounds for removing a sitting president, it was time for Newt to exit on his own terms rather than have terms forced on him by the very pack of fanatics he trained up.

I'm not looking for an argument either, but had you gone with the "ignore until a year and a half ago" version, I probably would have quibbled with that too. He's been a fixture of political media outlets since the Bush years, with the occasional "time out" for comments that should have made him as welcome on-air as stuff people scrape off their shoes. And in 2012 he was one of the temporary darlings of the "anybody but Mitt" clown car, as Trump was at the time. He's been around, being his poisonous, destructive self, just not rating the headlines he used to when he was in the House.