Tell Newt to Shut Up: Prize-Winning Washington Post Journalists Reveal How Reality Gagged the Gingrich Revolution [Paperback]

PRIZEWINNINGWASHINGTON POSTJOURNALISTS REVEAL HOW REALITY GAGGED THE GINGRICH REVOLUTION
Speaker Newt Gingrich and his troops promised a revolution when they seized power in January 1995. The year that followed was one of the most fascinating and tumultuous in modern American history. After stunning early success with the Contract with America, the Republicans began to lose momentum; by year's end Gingrich was isolated and uncertain, and his closest allies were telling him to shut up.
Here is an unprecedented, fly-on-the-wall look at the successes, sellouts, and perhaps fatal mistakes of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution. Based on the award-winningWashington Postseries that documented the Republicans' day-to-day attempts to revolutionize the American government, Tell Newt to Shut Up! gets to the heart of the political process.David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History).Chapter One

General Gingrich

Sonny Bono got it first. Before most professional image advisers and veteran Republican pols had a clue, the freshman congressman from Palm Springs anticipated what would happen. Newt Gingrich was rocketing into a new realm, and he seemed to have no idea how different and dangerous it would be. It mattered little that he had prepared himself to be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives since his college days, or that he had spent thousands of hours with managers at Delta, l“%