THE outcome of the mid-term elections this week made Newt Gingrich's resignation as Speaker of the House of Representatives virtually inevitable. It may well be a development his party will come to look back on with satisfaction.
There was no way in which Mr Gingrich could duck blame for his party's poor showing. The question now is where the Republicans go as they prepare for the presidential election in two years time. The man who, at present, looks like their most probable candidate, George Bush Jnr, stands well away from Mr Gingrich in style and substance. In winning easy re-election in Texas, he underlined the appeal of pragmatic Republican governors who eschew the rhetoric, ideology and attack politics which the Speaker espoused, and, while strongly pro-business, show concern for minorities and the disadvantaged.
If he does run, Mr Bush may be all too glad that Mr Gingrich is no longer associated with the party leadership. Although he showed himself able to cut deals with the White House, the Speaker came to stand for an essentially negative approach to politics. His brand of Republicanism was seen as being against everything - and obsessed with the single issue of Mr Clinton. As one Republican, Steve Largent, put it on Friday: 'We need likable, congenial messengers to carry our ideas a less partisan tone.' The next Speaker is likely to be a champion of tax cutting or low spending or smaller government, or all three. But he is also likely to be less confrontational than the man who has just stepped down, and who kept up his angry tone to the end. In a conference call just before he announced that he would not stand for re-election, Mr Gingrich spoke of purging the poison in the political system. But no sooner had he appealed for unity than he was inveighing against his Republican opponents as hateful cannibals.
At the mid-term elections four years ago, Mr Gingrich triumphed on a wave of conservatism. He failed to build effectively on proclamations that his party was forging a new agenda for America. Now that he is gone, the Republicans have to define and enunciate their message for the coming presidential battle. If that contest can be conducted free of the overblown rhetoric in which the Speaker specialised, and with a minimum of ideological posturing, it will be good for America, and for the world, which is so influenced by what happens there.
