Dick Armey and Tom Coburn are among the longtime critics who have fallen silent. Telling: Newt's critics shut up

Newt Gingrich’s critics within the GOP are legion, but for the moment they’re also something else: quiet.

They all remember the last time Gingrich held power, as House speaker: the bombast, the reckless personal life, the arrogance and lack of discipline that bordered on dangerous. Some, like Dick Armey and Sen. Tom Coburn, have made a side career of keeping alive the tales of Bad Newt, with a zeal that said, never again.


But now Coburn — who declared a year ago that Gingrich is “the last person I’d vote for for president” and lacks the character to lead the nation — offers a brisk no comment when approached.

Former Rep. Bill Paxon, who sought to overthrow Gingrich, says he’d rather not revisit the past. Even Armey, the former majority leader under Gingrich turned fierce rival, has an aide say they’re “keeping quiet on Newt, for now.”

It’s a remarkable turnabout for someone whose party tried to drive him from power 14 years ago. It’s not that these detractors want to see him as the party’s nominee, let alone as president. In more unguarded moments, the prospect frightens some of them. A few figure he’s so erratic he’ll self-destruct on his own. And some of Gingrich’s critics are choosing to speak out.

“There are so very many stories out there about his failings, his moral failings, that he certainly would be a bad pick to bear the title of the president of the United States,” says Guy Molinari, a former congressman who had a falling out with Gingrich in the 1980s, and who is also Paxon’s father-in-law. “I think there is a huge element of risk involved.”

But in the face of Gingrich’s surge in the polls, most Gingrich critics are keeping it to themselves. Part of it is because, recognizing that Gingrich is connecting with the GOP base better than anyone in the field, they have little desire to get cross-wise with their own party. Put more bluntly, there is a dawning realization they might have to make peace with Newt the nominee.

The reluctance isn’t only due to raw political calculations.

Even among confirmed Gingrich skeptics, there is also a sort of fellow pol’s respect for how the former speaker, abandoned by his consultants and campaign team, has clawed his way back into contention. This is all bad news for Mitt Romney, who had hoped these anti-character witnesses would take down his latest rival.

Mixed in with the sound of silence, too, is some powerful wishful thinking: Maybe Newt’s changed.

Some of his old colleagues are willing to be convinced that Gingrich is not the same man whose own Republican lieutenants tried to frag him in 1997, little more than two years after he led them to their first House majority in 40 years.

“What I’m not [hearing] is this: We’ve got to stop him at all costs,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former political strategist who has known Gingrich for decades. “He deserves at least the chance. The campaign will determine whether he’s up to being the nominee or the president.”

Cole recalled a recent Washington dinner with a small group of former House Republicans who served with Gingrich.

“There were Newt war stories,” Cole said. “About how things with him were very difficult in terms of focus and discipline and his new plan every day.”

At the same time, “they were kind of excited [about his comeback],” said Cole, a Ph.D. historian. “But now it’s like Napoleon showing up for the 100 days. We all may follow him into battle again — and you just hope it’s not Waterloo.”

Even by the standards of politics — where partisans know better than to throw rocks at their prospective presidential candidate — the muffled voices of the no-Newt chorus are breathtaking.

This is a man who led the push for Bill Clinton’s impeachment even as he carried on his own extramarital affair. He was fined $300,000 for obstructing a House ethics probe against him. He spearheaded the 1995 budget showdown with Clinton that led to two government closures and a resurgence in Clinton’s popularity despite the “Republican Revolution” the year before.

But it was more than that. Gingrich’s ego made him want to be constantly at the center of all the action. He was thin-skinned and arrogant in dealing with the press and critics in both parties. He dismantled the House seniority system and accrued power in the speaker’s office, a trend that continued under his successors. And his lack of discipline often resulted in a morning strategy that was discarded by day’s end if not noon, much to the dismay of his own caucus.

Gingrich has fresh problems, too. Despite well-received performances in a long series of Republican primary debates, the familiar grandiosity that made Gingrich an easy caricature for political opponents has re-emerged with his surge in the polls. He credited himself with winning the Cold War and predicted he’ll be the Republican nominee.

He recently referred to himself as a “celebrity” in defending against charges that he shouldn’t have taken $1.6 million in fees from embattled home mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Gingrich argued that he didn’t need the money because he made $60,000 per speech — more than most American households earn all year. He also offended many when he suggested that poor kids should take up janitorial work at elementary schools.

Gingrich allies acknowledge the candidate’s baggage — the multiple marriages, his troubled speakership and even new fodder for critics, such as a six-figure Tiffany line of credit — but argue voters are willing to look past it.

Former Rep. Bob Livingston, who pushed Gingrich into retirement by running against him for the speakership in 1998, has signed on as a supporter of the campaign.

“Does Newt have collateral issues? I’d say yeah, sure,” said Livingston, who is co-hosting a Dec. 7 Washington fundraiser for Gingrich. “Everybody knows this about Newt — he’s got issues. And I think it’s all noise because it doesn’t impair his ability to run the nation.”

This from the man who, in launching his bid to dethrone Gingrich, said, “Revolutionizing takes … many talents. My friend Newt Gingrich brought those talents to bear and put the Republicans in the majority. Day-to-day governing takes others. I believe I have those talents.”

Former Rep. Bob Walker, one of Gingrich’s closest friends in politics and an adviser to the campaign, also said Gingrich has been blamed unfairly for his handling of the government shutdown. Walker notes that Republicans didn’t suffer heavy losses in the 1996 election and that Gingrich was able to move forward on balancing the federal budget as a result of the standoff with Clinton.

Still, the Pennsylvania Republican is in the camp that believes Gingrich is a different man today than he was at the time.

“I think he’s changed over the years, that he’s become more introspective and reflective,” Walker said.

Added one longtime Gingrich insider: “This really is someone who has been humbled by life … He is in a happy marriage, he converted to Catholicism. He is in a very different place.”

Yet even allies who insist Gingrich has changed acknowledge that he needs to surround himself with focused, disciplined handlers to translate his internal idea factory into a successful presidency.

“He’s an idea guy,” said Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who is one of the half-dozen lawmakers to endorse Gingrich in the GOP presidential primary. “He needs good senior aides and Cabinet officers around him to separate his great ideas from his not-so-great ideas.”

But it’s the sudden quiet that is most revealing when it comes to Gingrich and his old foes.

It’s a measure of the seriousness with which Republicans are taking Gingrich’s resurgence. Those who declined to comment on him or simply did not return messages include not only the likes of Coburn, Paxon and Armey but also former House GOP Whip Tom DeLay and former Rep. Steve Largent.

These Republicans were not always so hesitant to offer up unvarnished views of their former speaker. For instance, in August 2010, Coburn told the Tulsa World that Gingrich was “the last person I’d vote for for president of the United States. His life indicates he does not have a commitment to the character traits necessary to be a great president.”

Appearing on Fox News Sunday yesterday, however, Coburn expressed a reluctance to expound on his concerns, even after he was shown a clip from earlier in the year in which he criticized Gingrich.

Coburn said he had concerns over the former speaker’s approach to the job — “I just found his leadership lacking,” he allowed — but offered no specific examples. He was so vague that moderator Chris Wallace said he was “pulling teeth” in pushing the senator.

Part of the apparent détente owes to personal diplomacy on the part of Gingrich.

At the South Carolina debate in November, the former speaker sought out Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a former House member who was one of key players behind the aborted Gingrich coup. The former speaker said he’d like to discuss energy issues with Graham, something vital in the state that is home to the Savannah River nuclear site.

Gingrich followed up, and the old adversaries had a long conversation last week that went well beyond what to do with nuclear waste, according to a source familiar with the chat.

Graham wouldn’t detail what was said, but he said Gingrich seemed happier than he had ever seen him.

“He really does seem to have grown,” said Graham.

Former Senate GOP Leader Trent Lott, Gingrich’s counterpart for a time in the ’90s, said he also believed there were signs of a new Newt.

“Clearly he has mellowed over the years,” said Lott, now a Romney backer.

And Lott touched on something that seems to be serving Gingrich well, especially among GOP activists who don’t much remember the internal House caucus wars but very much do recall who ushered in the Republican Revolution.

“Newt was the key [to the 1994 election],” Lott said. “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t Bob Dole, it wasn’t anybody else. It was Newt Gingrich. He was the head of the revolution.”

But if the Mississippian is willing to give his former colleague credit for the past, he’s less inclined to concede that he’s the answer for the GOP’s future.

Asked directly if Gingrich has the temperament to be president, Lott said: “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

And if there’s not a burgeoning Stop Newt movement among his current and former Hill colleagues, there’s also little enthusiasm to have him on top of the ticket next year.

“Most members I talk to still think Romney is [the] best bet to provide them with the environment they need to be successful,” said one unaligned House Republican.

Some Gingrich associates are bracing for a display of Old Newt at any moment — the quick-to-anger, nasty man who was so easy for the Clinton White House to caricature, particularly if he starts to face tough questions about his third wife, Callista, with whom he carried on an affair before they married.

As with much about Gingrich, there is a mythology that has grown up around the period when he ran the House. There were indisputable accomplishments: He led the House GOP to its first majority since the Eisenhower administration; pushed for the adoption of spending cuts that eventually led to a balanced budget and the first government surplus in decades; enacted an overhaul of welfare with Clinton and instituted new regulations to make Congress live more by the same rules as the rest of the country.

“During a Democratic presidency, we accomplished amazing things. We couldn’t have done that without Newt. We couldn’t have done it without his generalship,” Livingston noted.

But to those who know Gingrich’s powers of persuasion best, there’s a sense that the buyer — whether it’s a House Republican, a GOP primary voter or a swing-state independent — ought to beware.

In 2003, then-Rep. Mark Souder marveled as House conservatives — including Souder — were swayed to vote for the Medicare prescription drug law by a man who had been driven from the speakership. When Gingrich was done making the pitch to a closed-door session of House Republicans, Souder said, “He added that any of us who didn’t support it should report to his office and explain why we could not.”

“I turned to some of my friends and said: ‘This is exactly why we elected him speaker, and exactly why we removed him as speaker,’” Souder continued. “His sales pitch, more than anything else, switched my vote and the votes of others on a bill that still took most of the night to pass while the vote was held open. And Medicare is going broke faster than ever.”

Dan Meyer, who served as Gingrich’s chief of staff in the speaker’s office, acknowledged the mixed assessment of how Gingrich handled the most important post he’s ever held. But, like others, he believes the former speaker is a changed man.

“He’s very bright, he could think strategically. He had tremendous support within the [Republican Conference],” Meyer said. “Most of them never thought they’d be in the majority, and they credited him with getting them to the majority. Frankly, we accomplished a lot of things.”

Meyer, however, admitted Gingrich could move in a new direction without even a warning that it was coming, to the immense frustration and anger of his Republican colleagues.

“He worked longer than anybody else, he read more than anybody else, he talked to more people than anybody else. So he would absorb all this information,” Meyer said “And when he got new information that he thought was relevant, he was willing to pivot on his strategy. And there’s no doubt that would disorient people that were trying to follow him. ‘We’re going in this direction,’ and two days later, it would be, ‘We’re going in that direction.’ Unless it’s handled properly, you’ve got a lot of people going in the wrong direction.”

But for now, there’s no organized effort to take him down that would highlight such tendencies.

Among his former colleagues, rather, there’s a shared respect for how he’s defied the odds.

“Newt may not fade as quickly as others did because he is a good debater, he is articulate, and he is brimming with ideas,” said Lott.

And as Jack Howard, a lobbyist and former Gingrich aide who’s now advising his old boss, noted, the politicians keeping their heads down are after all politicians.

“Each rode the last Gingrich wave to power,” said Howard. “They’ve seen it before. So they’re probably scanning the horizon, gauging whether this is a ride-able wave or a rogue one.”

Added Howard: “Surf’s up.”

Maggie Haberman contributed to this report.