I have continued to identify the double-whammy of Reagan and Gingrich as the beginning of the end of the Republican party as an entity. Yes, Nixon should take a good deal of blame, too, but the party - if reluctantly - took steps to respond to his excesses. Since then, the party has never held its leadership to account, and that is the very source of corruption. Reagan never paid for the Iran-contra debacle, or H.W. for the pardons, reputationally. They were simply excused their misconduct.
Gingrich tore down the infrastructure of the House and discarded all of the norms that had been built up over a century. The House has never recovered. It is more broken now than since before the Civil War, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner in the chamber, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts. The means are different now, but the motives are the same.
Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump were all natural iterative results of the acceptance of misconduct that began with Ford's pardon of Nixon, and continues to this day. January 6 is a natural outgrowth of Gingrich's approach to governance. Remember only 10 Republican Representatives voted to impeach Trump, and
147 Republicans voted to contest the 2020 election results. Party
über alles.
