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Newt Gingrich – a portrait of a complicated politician [2]
By William Douglas | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Just who is Newt Gingrich anyway?
Is he the big thinking rhetorical bomb-thrower who led Republicans to power in the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in four decades, only to have his troops rebel against him four years later?
Is he the undisciplined, self-absorbed House speaker who admitted that a 1995 shutdown of the federal government was prompted in part by what he perceived as a cold shoulder and shabby treatment by President Bill Clinton during a long Air Force One flight?
Is Gingrich the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do leader who pushed for Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 stemming from his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky even while having an affair of his own with a congressional aide?
Or is he the professorial, adult in the room, elder statesman seen on TV during this year’s Republican presidential debates — a forum that’s helped catapult him from the bottom tier to the top rank of GOP White House hopefuls. Read More [2]