Newt Gingrich Wants the GOP To Shut Down the Government Over Oil Drilling

Taking control of Congress in 1995 after over 40 years of being in the minority, the Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich thought that finally his party would control the agenda in the nation’s capital. But in his first year he overreached, and by 1999 he was out of the Speaker’s Chair and he resigned from Congress. Besides a penchant for arrogance and a tin ear when it came to policy, the moment when Gingrich truly lost control took place during the winter of 1995-96 when the Republican Congress allowed the federal government to “shut down.” The story is a bit complicated, but it comes to the Republicans sending President Clinton a funding bill that cut much federal spending, including higher Medicare premiums. Demanding a “clean” bill, Clinton vetoes the Republican bill and when they refuse to pass a new bill, the federal government shut down. The Republicans standing in polls plummets. 

Gingrich and the rest of Republican leadership believed that if they forced a shutdown based on cutting spending that the American public would rally to their cause, but instead they were viewed as stubborn and Clinton, whose disapproval rating was a major cause for the Republicans winning Congress just one year earlier, recovered his own popularity and went on to win the 1996 presidential election in a landslide.

Now, as a small group of Republicans go to the floor of the House each day to debate offshore oil drilling in darkness and without microphones, they have brought Newt Gingrich back from political irrelevancy to support their effort.  So what does he propose?

“Are [Democrats] really prepared to close the government in order to stop drilling?” Gingrich asked. “Because I think the country will find that to be a suicidal strategy.”

Now this is the same argument that he used in 1995 — that it was actually Clinton who was shutting down the goevrnment by vetoing the Republican budget.  Technically he was right, but the public did not see it that way, and while the Republicans stayed in control of Congress for another 10 years, they never regained the moral authority and popularity they had at that point.  But for some reason he believes that this strategy that failed him and the GOP in 1995 would be a grand strategy in 2008.

The issue of offshore oil drilling contains many pitfalls and is of course both a political gimmick and a boondoggle to big oil.  But it does have political resonance.  The House Democratic leadership has been avoiding placing any legislation that could be amended with an offshore oil drilling piece from even coming to the floor for debate.  The Republicans believe that with the country now supporting the idea, there would be enough Democrats to support it in a vote.  But they will get their chance to vote on it.  The Congressional ban on offshore oil drilling must be renewed this year by September 30th or it will expire, and the democrats want to place it in the Continuing Resolution that will fund the government through sometime next year. Republicans will be welcome to vote against that Resolution.

Instead Gingrich believes that shutting down the government would make the Democrats look bad. For those of us who remember the shutdown of 1995, the shutting down of national parks, passport agencies and other parts of government did not help the Republicans make their point. But it seems like this issue is so important to them, and their benefactors in the oil industry, they may be willing to take that chance again.  It may be a sign of total desperation for Congressional Republicans that they have decided to turn to Newt Gingrich once again for political strategy advice.

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