{"id":11554,"date":"2011-12-14T03:12:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T03:12:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-12-14T03:12:59","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T03:12:59","slug":"Newt-Gingrich-and-Ariana-Huffington-A-90-s-Story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=11554","title":{"rendered":"Newt Gingrich and Ariana Huffington: A 90’s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arianna Huffington and the liberal online juggernaut bearing her name have been tough on a lot of Republican presidential candidates, but when it comes to Newt Gingrich, the knife has cut a little deeper. Since the former House speaker emerged as the front-runner for the GOP nomination, Huffington has used her media megaphone \u2014 including the 37 million-visitor-a-month Huffington Post \u2014 to excoriate him as an insincere, self-serving flip-flopper, sometimes in biting personal terms. In a recent HuffPo column, for instance, she compared Gingrich to \u201cthe crazy uncle\u201d who tries to persuade you to bet your retirement savings on an Alpaca farm. And in a Sunday show interview this month, which was quickly posted on the site, she compared him to Microsoft, in that \u201cthe more he iterates, the worse he gets.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t always this way. Back in the 1990s, when Gingrich helped the GOP recapture the House and took on the Clinton administration as speaker, Huffington was one of his strongest supporters. \u201cShe was a big champion of the Newt Revolution,\u201d Tony Blankley, Gingrich\u2019s press secretary at the time, told POLITICO. \u201cShe was a friend and an ally.\u201d Time magazine called her \u201cGingrich\u2019s muse,\u201d and David Brock, in his memoir of the period, noted her efforts to become \u201cthe godmother of the Gingrich Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a quintessential Washington relationship that blossomed in the conservative salons Huffington hosted in the cavernous $4 million manse she shared with her former husband, Michael Huffington, but it\u2019s a relationship that, in some ways, both have been trying for years to distance themselves from. Just as Gingrich has worked to recast himself as a reformer averse to the ways of Washington, Huffington has long since abandoned her conservative roots. But it is in part because of this history that Huffington\u2019s criticisms of Gingrich strike some who knew her then as a bit hypocritical.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A recent critique of Gingrich\u2019s inconsistencies is \u201cso obviously about herself,\u201d said Andy Ferguson, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard. \u201cHer accusing him of opportunistic flip-flopping is like being called ugly by a frog.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re talking about two operators trying to use each other for the advancement of their respective careers,\u201d he said. \u201cThis talk about principles and ideals is all gloss over their efforts to get ahead.\u201d Blankley, who is still a friend of both, expressed similar sentiments about Huffington. \u201cShe is one of the really exceptional promoters of the last 15 to 20 years, and that\u2019s what she\u2019s doing now,\u201d he said. \u201cI would not confuse that with sincerity: For a while she was our opportunist and then she became somebody else\u2019s, or her own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huffington said her criticism of Gingrich is not driven by personal enmity or partisan politics but by her belief that Gingrich failed to live up to his early promises as speaker, including a commitment to bolstering the social safety net. \u201cThere is absolutely nothing about my views that is cheerleading any political party or any candidate, which is what partisanship is,\u201d she told POLITICO, pointing out that she and the Huffington Post have criticized Democrats up to and including President Barack Obama for perceived shortcomings on select social and economic justice subjects. \u201cBoth the site and I have certain issues that we care very deeply about \u2014 the fate of the middle class, jobs, what\u2019s happening to the poorest Americans \u2014 and these are staples of our coverage,\u201d she said. Gingrich \u201cmade these really powerful statements\u201d on those issues, she said, and \u201cif he had followed through on his rhetoric, he would have been a very different leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no escaping the key role that Gingrich played in Huffington\u2019s emergence within the conservative movement, as well as her eventual estrangement from it. Gingrich \u201cplucked her out of obscurity,\u201d according to Ferguson, and Huffington returned the favor by helping to lead a cheering section for Gingrich.<\/strong> It was a time of \u201ctremendous churning of the social and professional order\u201d in Washington, recalled Ferguson, who tagged along with Gingrich in early 1995 after being asked to consider collaborating on a book. And \u201cby attaching herself to Gingrich, it gave her a kind of cachet in Washington society. \u2026 Arianna became a representative of that whole Republican Revolution.\u201d<\/strong>
\nGingrich first saw her on C-SPAN, giving a speech soon after Michael Huffington\u2019s election to the House in 1992, on the importance of incorporating a \u201csocial conscience\u201d into the conservative ethos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Huffington recalls Gingrich calling her shortly thereafter to tell her the speech \u201cwas exactly right\u201d and was the direction that he wanted to move the party. He invited her to make the case to GOP House members at a retreat in Princeton, N.J., and not long afterward she landed a job running the Center for Effective Compassion, an offshoot of a Gingrich-affiliated think tank. There she focused on private-sector alternatives to government welfare programs \u2014 an area of mutual fascination with Gingrich \u2014 and launched a column in which she argued for the ideals expressed by the new Republican majority. Her status as a Washington power player was cemented by a series of profiles in major media outlets, including a November 1995 Time magazine piece that deemed her \u201cGingrich\u2019s muse\u201d and the \u201cbane\u201d of Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination he later won.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Gingrich-Huffington relationship reached its apotheosis three weeks after the profile, when Huffington penned a column for the Weekly Standard urging Gingrich to challenge Dole for the nomination. In the column, Huffington touted Gingrich as \u201cslayer of the New Deal, the most powerful congressional politician since Henry Clay\u201d and credited him with \u201cdeliver[ing] on the legislative agenda of the revolution more decisively than even his most ardent supporters thought possible.\u201d Gingrich, she wrote, should \u201cuse the spotlight of presidential politics \u2026 to challenge Americans to join in weaving a new and true safety net out of their own actions and compassion, to make a lasting difference in their own communities.\u201d<\/strong> Oddly enough, the fallout seems to have happened around the same time. Huffington says she started growing disillusioned with Gingrich just months after he became speaker. The tipping point, she wrote in her 2001 book \u201cHow to Overthrow the Government,\u201d was his embrace of Dole, who she described as \u201ca backroom operator without a clear vision for the country. So I started firing shots in my column.\u201d A September 1998 column blasting conservatives for supporting the drug war prompted a handwritten note from Gingrich, who declared it \u201cstrategically counterproductive,\u201d she wrote in the book. Gingrich went on to say in the note: \u201cWhat good does it do to take on your friends two months before the election?\u201d By then, Huffington had all but abandoned the Republican Party and even divorced her husband, who declared that he was gay and said Huffington knew about his sexual interest in men before they got married. She eventually left Washington for Los Angeles.<\/strong>
\nVery true. Huffington is as phony as a $2 bill. Everyone knew that her husband (the oil mogul) was gay. The “self-made” so-called independent, feminist modern woman was a gold-digging, social climber who clawed her way to the top by using men like all of the other liberal, feminist, so-called Modern Women do! If left to their own devices, they would be big fat 0’s in our society. Let’s face it, she was an unattractive outspoken, power hungry Greek immigrant who hardly anyone could understand. People in the know realize that the only reason Ariana Huffington is on the map is because she was married to Michael Huffington, period! And that goes for all of the other so-called independent feminist would be big fat 0’s out there who matter only because they are married to brilliant, rich and accomplished men. For God’s sake, at least give credit where the credit is due! Let’s be honest, the greatest accomplishments of these women remain in persuading men of Michael Huffington’s status to marry them. Be grateful to the Lord for that! I don’t think that there is anything worse than a woman who piggybacks on a man’s success and then takes all of the credit for it. Talk about a lack of integrity! Give praise and respect to the hand that feeds you.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Asked in a 2007 interview with Michael Eisner about her ideological conversion, Huffington attributed it to Gingrich\u2019s inability to keep his promises. \u201cRemember, Newt Gingrich, when he first became speaker, and gave his first speech, he spoke about FDR, he spoke about the moral imperative of fighting poverty being greater than the imperative of balancing the budget \u2014 it was a different song he was singing,\u201d she said. She made the same charge a bit more poetically in her recent HuffPo column: Gingrich, she wrote, is \u201ca very Walt Whitmanesque candidate \u2014 he celebrates himself, he sings of himself, he is large, and he contains multitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferguson blasted as \u201cshameless\u201d Huffington\u2019s charge that Gingrich \u201chas the ability to seemingly believe each of his contradictory positions with absolute conviction.\u201d More forgiving, Blankley notes that \u201cMost people who have been in politics or have been commenting on politics for 20 or 30 years have moved around on various issues.\u201d \u201cThe way to read Arianna is that she\u2019s going to say what at this moment fits into her public presentation,\u201d he said. \u201cI think she has a wonderful sense of who she is in the media \u2014 from the time she ran for [California] governor, to the time she founded Huffington Post.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huffington launched the Huffington Post in 2005, a site with liberal leanings that was critical of corporate media and, according to media critic Howard Kurtz, \u201ctoo populist\u201d for The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. In February, Huffington\u2019s vision and entrepreneurial instincts were vindicated when AOL agreed to buy HuffPo for $315 million \u2014 as much as $100 million of which went straight to her \u2014 thereby turning Huffington into a major media player. But the idea that her site was \u201cpopulist\u201d was eagerly refuted by the unpaid HuffPo bloggers who unsuccessfully fought for a slice, or even a crumb, of the $315 million pie. The move also sparked criticism from across the political spectrum, with conservatives contending she\u2019d become the corporate overlord she had so often criticized, and users fearing that the site would lose the liberal sensibility that had attracted them.<\/p>\n

At the time, Huffington told POLITICO \u201cWe don\u2019t see ourselves as left \u2026 And I think it\u2019s one area where news consumers are ahead of the media, because they know that continuing to see everything that\u2019s happening as a right-left issue is missing what\u2019s happening and is also making it much harder for us to be properly informed.\u201d Bob Scheer, a liberal columnist who for 16 years has hosted a public radio program with Huffington called \u201cLeft, Right & Center,\u201d said Huffington has in fact been quite consistent. \u201cWhen she was on the right, she cared about the same things that she cares about now that she floats above the categories \u2014 which is the way we describe her on our show,\u201d said Scheer, who also writes a column for Huffington Post. \u201cShe is a very sincere person committed to her view of the world, which does change, but I don\u2019t accept the flip-flop thing on her.\u201d \u201cIf the opportunistic label should be put on one of the two, it clearly should be Gingrich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scheer said he\u2019d been at a gathering Gingrich attended at Huffington\u2019s home when she was a conservative and recalled \u201cshe seemed to like Newt for reasons I could respect at the time \u2014 he was trying to figure out what government was supposed to do, at least that was her view of it.\u201d Scheer predicted Huffington \u201cwill probably go out of her way to give Newt\u2019s\u201d perspective. In fact, when Gingrich and Huffington bumped into one another unexpectedly this summer in Amalfi, Italy, after years without contact, she invited him to submit a post about his latest book. He does not appear to have taken her up on the offer.<\/p>\n

Don’t hold your breath because he won’t! Ariana Huffington would’ve been a career Conservative but she couldn’t make it as a Republican Politician! Maybe she wasn’t blonde or pretty enough or maybe she just didn’t speak understandable English?? Who knows?<\/em><\/strong>
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