With days to go before the Iowa caucuses, Republican Presidential candidates Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have stepped up the attacks on one another. Fueled by tens of millions of dollars, each candidate’s camp has run TV and radio spots raising doubts about the conservative credentials of the two former congressional colleagues. The goal, quite obviously, is to attract the votes of supporters of Herman Cain, a fellow conservative who dropped out of the GOP sweepstakes at a time when polls showed him surging in Iowa.
But there may be more to the Gingrich-Paul feud, at least according to another onetime Republican House Member who served with and knows both candidates well.
“When Ron made his comeback bid in 1996, Newt supported his primary opponent — and I don’t think Ron ever forgave him,” said Greg Ganske, who came to the House as part of the “Gingrich class” in 1994 and served until making an unsuccessful race for the U.S. Senate in ’02. Now chairman of Gingrich’s Iowa campaign, Ganske is, like Paul, a physician. He spoke to HUMAN EVENTS last week from his Des Moines practice and between appointments with patients.
He recalled how Paul (who served in the House from Texas briefly in 1976 and then from 1978-84) had launched a comeback campaign in 1996 from another Lone Star State district. Expecting to face then-Democratic Rep. Greg Laughlin, Republican, Paul was stunned when moderate-to-conservative Laughlin switched parties to run as a Republican. Both then-House Speaker Gingrich and then-National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Bill Paxon (NY) had strongly encouraged Laughlin to switch from Democrat to Republican and then backed him vigorously when he made the switch.
“As well they should — he was courted by them, and the leadership in the party backs incumbents,” said Ganske, “but Ron, as a former Republican congressman who was facing a Democratic convert, just couldn’t see that.” (Paul himself was not a completely loyal Republican, having bolted the party to become the Libertarian nominee for President in 1988).
To be sure, Ron Paul certainly acknowledged this to me during his 1996 campaign - he was very upset at Newt Gingrich and the National Republican Congressional Committee, even if he understood they did what they had to do. The last two Republicans who became Democrats were New York Rep. Mike Forbes in 1998 and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter in 2010 - and both were defeated in primaries. In contrast, Republicans have a long list of Democrats in Congress who have joined them and then go on to win contested primaries in their "newfound home." Colorado Democratic Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell joined the GOP in 1995 and, four years later, won a contested primary over several opponents and then went on to win re-election.
Paul, as it turned out, held Laughlin to a plurality in a three-candidate race and, in the resulting run-off, defeated the incumbent with 55 percent of the vote. Paul has represented the district since, although he has announced he will not seek re-election in 2012.
As Ganske pointed out, the Republican hierarchy in the House almost always supports its incumbents — even when they are recent converts to the GOP. In returning to Congress, Paul was never close to Speaker Gingrich. Fellow Republicans never have understood quite why this is so — until now, as their feud spills out into the nationally watched caucuses January 3.
