Mr Spock’s thread Saturday 6 Jan 2021.

After the disastrous vice Presidency of Mike Pence, he has been awarded a place on the Heritage Foundation. The foundation set up by the radical extreme Paul Weyrich to take over government and oust any centrist Republican.
Let’s take a step back. Where did Newt Gingrich go after he was disgraced and asked to step down as Speaker of the House. Did he become more extreme? Where did he go? He went to the... Heritage Foundation. What did the Heritage Foundation want?? They wanted him to run for
President. In 2012, he fell flat against Mitt Romney. In 2016, stories came out that he was going to be the pick for DOnald Trump as VP. So Sean Hannity was brought in to interview Gingrich on Fox News. The day of the Fox interview, Trump had met with Gingrich at the Conrad Hotel
in Indianapolis. Trump had actually intended to fly back to New York the previous night after attending a rally with Pence. However, a flat tire on his plane grounded him. Hannity had secretly allowed Gingrich to fly on his private jet to Indianapolis. In the meeting was Paul
Manafort, Ivanka, Jared, Jr and Eric talking about the role of the VP and relations with Capitol Hill
Gingrich liked Trump. The fact that he was ruthless and defiant. Gingrich believed that Trump would never have become a nominee without him. He believed that Trump would
destabilize the entire US political system. Something Paul Weyrich wanted to achieve when he founded the Heritage Foundation. In the Fox interview, Gingrich stated his similarities to Trump. Then suddenly he changed the conversation, stating that he might not be the best fit as
VP. It was a remarkable change of direction and pointed to Trump’s second choice, Mike Pence. That a Trump/Gingrich ticket might be a “two-pirate ticket.” Pence might be better as a stabilizing force. The new GOP goal was never to negotiate or legislate, but to do everything
to maintain partisan power. If it was politically useful to engage in behavior that could destroy the possibility of governance, which rendered bipartisanship impossible and would unfairly decimate their opponents’ reputations, then so be it.
Republicans were willing to enter into alliances of convenience with extremists who trafficked in reactionary populism, nativism, and racial backlash. While Gingrich’s era of partisanship did not witness outright physical violence between members, what did take root
was the normalization of a no-holds-barred style of partisan warfare where the career of every politician was seen as expendable and where it was fair game to shatter routine legislative processes in pursuit of power, even when there was not an issue as monumental as slavery
on the table. Gingrich was the type of politician that Paul Weyrich of the Heritage Foundation wanted and needed.
Gingrich brought down one of the most powerful people in Washington, the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright. The brutal battle shocked Washington and
forever transformed American politics. In two hundred years of House history, Wright was the first Speaker to be forced to resign. Gingrich’s campaign against Wright for allegedly violating ethics rules that Congress had imposed in the aftermath of Watergate turned the
forty-five-year-old Georgian from a reckless bomb-thrower whom most Republican leaders kept at arm’s length to one of the party’s top national leaders. He secured a leadership position as a result of his efforts. Nobody took Gingrich lightly after he brought down the Speaker.
Gingrich had come to understand that in the modern media era politics was as much about perception as substance. The way journalists framed a story and the narratives they crafted about an issue could be as powerful as the facts. Gingrich had been peddling a tale about the
illegitimacy of the Democratic majority, and he found that he was not alone within his party; after Wright’s first day as Speaker in January 1987, Gingrich made the villain of that tale the corrupt Texan now leading the House Democrats.
Gingrich knew that good storytelling
mattered. Gingrich would throw out an argument or an accusation, let an idea circulate in the media ecosystem, and when his critics pounced, he would turn their words against them. For Gingrich, the central battle was shaping the way voters conceived of the basic problem at hand.
First Gingrich made Wright the embodiment of the House’s ills; then Gingrich drove him to resign; then Gingrich took his majority and his gavel.
Drawn to power, emboldened by success, the Republican Party embraced Gingrich’s politics.
Most of the GOP acted as though the destruction of Speaker Wright proved that shattering the rules of an institution could be an effective way to seize political power. Gingrich’s generation, in turn, would spawn their own successors with the Tea Party in 2010.
Tea Party Republicans thrived in a partisan universe that revolved around Roger Ailes’s media empire, Fox News played to a zealous crowd of voters who rarely bucked the party line.
In 2016, Trump did decide to go with Pence who was Manafort’s choice. Paul Weyrich and the
Heritage Foundation has been building power by hijacking abortion in the late 1970’s and needed the religious vote. Pence would serve as a bridge between his campaign and evangelical voters who were distrustful of the thrice-married, testosterone-filled reality television star.
Pence was a media-savvy, politician, one who would not steal the spotlight away from his attention-seeking boss.
The fact that Pence has become part of the Heritage Foundation may be their ultimate goal of taking over the government as was their original plan. To have an
extreme right-wing government, based upon amassing as much power as possible. This goal, set in the late 1970’s, set the year 2030 to achieve this. They would have to have everything in place at the state legislature level, which is what is happening right now all over the
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