[Note: This portrait is of course a bit one-sided, and the use of evidence somewhat selective. I am of course relying on the fact that people already have a picture of this guy, so instead of providing a full, rounded picture I restrict the post to providing evidence for why it is correct to classify him as a loon]

Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich is one of the world’s staunchestdefenders offamily values,famous – for instance – for leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton forlying under oath about adulterous activities, while concurrently having anaffair with a Capitol Hill staffer. “It doesn't matterwhat I do ... People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can saywhat I can say. It doesn't matter what I live,”said Gingrich,which is OK until you look at what he actually is saying. You see, during the2012 Republican primaries he made it pretty clear that if you don’t elect himAmerica would in short timeturn into a secular, atheist, Islamicfundamentalist country,asserting that there is aconspiracy between Islamic fundamentalists and secularists to hijack America – the thing is, as he toldJanet Mefferd,there is an “intolerant elite” made up of “secular judges and religious bigots”who aretrying to promote “radical Islam over Christianity and Judaism” (alsohere).And just check out his eruditeanalysis of beach volleyball,while you are at it, or – perhaps more disconcertingly –his assertion thatunemployment benefits violate the Declaration of Independence.At least Gingrich doesn’t take prisoners inhis attacks on the liberal elites.

His entry into the presidential nomination race (not always without scandals)provided onlookers with a mixture of hilarity, horror, and revulsion, though itdid make him have tochange his positions on some ideas in predictably unpredictable ways. As with so many fundie crazies, Gingrichdoesn’t appreciate the division of power (as long as he has it), and did forinstance claim that the president can simply ignore the Supreme Court if itissues a ruling he doesn’t like andsaid that he would order his administrationto do so if elected (Gingrich ison the record for wanting to outlaw judicial review and claiming that the president should be able to abolish any courts that don’tagree with him, toarrest judges who come up with rulings he doesn’t like,and that judgesshould come from fundamentalist Christian lawschools such asLiberty “University”).And as with so many fundie crazies he only actedbecause God told him to.And as with so many fundie crazy presidential candidates hepledged to combat gay rights,and as with so many crazy presidential candidates he isa signatory to Mississippi’s radical personhood amendment,which nicely sums up such people’s approach to reality: if the facts disagreewith you, you can get them to agree with you by fiat and declaration.

Gingrich is a fan of the phrase “secular-socialist machine,”which is apparently supposed to be derogatory. According to Gingrich (thoughdenied by reality), Obama is the most radical president in US history who usesSaul Alinsky tactics and Chicago politics to refashion the US into a dreaded“high-tax low-growth” society. Thus,Obama represents as great a threat toAmerica as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union did,which given the state of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union at present may betrue, but not in the way Gingrich intended. A slightly different source of “allour problems”is apparently that children in public schools are not forced topray.In the same vein, hehas said that non-believers should not be considered forpublic office,since he “would be really worried if somebody assured me that nothing in theirfaith would affect their judgments, because then I’d wonder, where’s yourjudgment — how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trustyou with power if you don’t pray?” Indeed,he said that he would want to firefederal employees who are too liberal,andhas likewise advocated David Barton’s Christian Nation mythology and historical revisionism,denied that there is a separation of church and state,andcalled for the restoration of the ‘Church Militant’.Of course, his defense of these matters was full ofrather blatant falsehoods,but that has never bothered presidential candidates much before and wasunlikely to start to do so with Newt Gingrich.

To show how much he cared about reason and religiousliberty, Gingrich named “Apostle”Dutch Sheets tohis faith leaders coalition.

As for science, Gingrichmocked anyone who accepts evolutionby asking “do you think … we’re randomly gathered protoplasm? We could havebeen rhinoceroses, but we got lucky this week?”,which is not quite how biologists would describe the process of evolution –though Gingrich has supported evolution, and even climate change,before;he is, in other words, probably primarily spineless, as opposed to Perry,Bachmann, and Santorum, who are probably actual creationists (maybe except forBachmann, whose beliefs are so incoherently dumb that they don’t add up toanything whatsoever). It is unclear whether Gingrich actually believed theidiocy he spewedhere (a classic case of projection from hell, in which he alsoseems to deny that wemay some day run out of oil).

Gingrich didscrew himself over pretty thoroughly during hisbid for the presidential nomination,includingrunning himself into the ground financially.Hopefully we have heard the very last of him.

There is a slightly dated list of quotes and incidentshere,a fine resourcehere,and a good list of Gingrich’s most appalling political positionshere.You can also test your ability to distinguish Gingrich from varioussupervillainshere.

Of course, we have to mention Paul Krugman’s quote:“Gingrich is what stupid people think a smart person sounds like,” thoughthe quote originally belongs to Elizabeth Bowen talking about Aldous Huxley (comment 22).