NEWT GINGRICH: How House Democrats became zombies
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House Democrats have evolved from being a relatively rough and tumble, argumentative, and rebellious bunch in the 1960s and 1970s into a tame, passive, robotic group today.

As I wrote earlier this week, after attending  to the Joint Session of Congress, it occurred to me that the House Democrats have become like zombies.

Their members sat mute and motionless no matter what the president said or who he honored – including a young cancer survivor, a newly accepted , and an American who had been held hostage in Russia. Not one House Democrat exhibited any trace of human compassion or interest. It was a bit eerie.

As I thought more about this, a lot of other things began to make sense.



The House Democrats have evolved from being a relatively rough and tumble, argumentative, and rebellious bunch in the 1960s and 1970s into a tame, passive, robotic group today.

Of course, historically, the Democratic Party has had a deep tradition of machine politics going back to the founding of Tammany Hall in New York City in 1786. Virtually every major city run by Democrats today operates this way. Over the long-term, the Democratic system simply tends to breed conformity. But this zombie-ism is a new, more extreme phenomenon.

You can start to track it with . Recall when Pelosi held up the nearly 1,000-page Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and said, "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it." At the time, I thought it was a foolish slip of the tongue. In hindsight, the Pelosi Speakership often involved Democratic members voting blindly as instructed by their elected leadership.

As Speaker in the first two years of , Pelosi took full advantage of this blind loyalty to pass a slew of massive bills with no elected officials really knowing the details.



Democrat after Democrat voted for deeply unpopular policies which barred parents from knowing what their children were doing and learning in school, allowed men to play women’s sports, opposed tax cuts, left the southern border open, etc. For a long time, I could not figure out how House Democrats could so brazenly ignore the will of the American people. Now I get it. They were turning into zombies.

Of course, Pelosi didn’t do it alone. The teachers’ and public employee unions kept people in line by threatening to fund primary opponents. The left-wing billionaires and activist groups also policed .

The propaganda media also gladly reminded Democrats of the party-movement line. From "The View," to MSNBC, to the , and the Washington Post, the signals went out. This is who we are. This is what we believe. Those who broke rank became ostracized and isolated. Just ask Sen. Joe Manchin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.



Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of .

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