Appearing on The View last week, Newt Gingrich continued his tradition of bashing political consultants.
“The Republican docrine of highly-paid consultants, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in 30 second ads doesn’t build the party,” Gingrich said.
This was nothing new. During a 2007 interview with conservative bloggers Rob Bluey and Ed Morrissey, Gingrich said:
I think Republican consultants are mostly very stupid. I think they have no education. I think they have no sense of history. … If I throw away African Americans, and then I throw away Latinos, and then I throw away suburban women, and then I throw away people under 40, and then I throw away everything north of Philadelphia — there’s a morning where Republicans can’t get to a majority.
This quote is kind of amazing. Here is Gingrich in 2007, worrying about the GOP writing-off Latinos — and young people — and suburban women.
Gingrich reaffirmed this belief in 2010, telling the Washington Post, “Consultants, in my opinion, are stupid.”
Honestly, Gingrich makes some incredibly valid points about the consultant class. They make money from TV ad buys, but not from grassroots organizing. They are focused on the immediate needs of short-term elections, often at the expense of the future.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Gingrich from hiring a ton of consultants to run his 2012 presidential campaign.
Of course, Gingrich caught fire only after the consultants left…