‘Citizen Newt’

Author and historian Craig Shirley talked about his new book Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative on Friday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily.

“You are hard-pressed, in the 230-year history of the American republic, to come up with the name of a political leader who wasn’t president who has had as long-lasting an impact on the national political debate as Newt Gingrich,” Shirley told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.

“Henry Clay, yeah, 20 years. William Jennings Bryan, yeah, about 20 years. But Gingrich burst on the national political scene in the late Seventies, and here we are some 30 or 40 years later, and he’s still relevant. He’s still advising presidents. His opinion is still sought-after. He’s still giving major speeches and writing books, and doing documentaries, and still very much relevant to what is going on currently in American politics,” he said.

“That in and of itself is remarkable, his longevity is remarkable,” he observed. “Nixon lasted a long time, but he was a president. Reagan lasted a long time, long before they were president, going back to the Forties, but again he was president. That, in and of itself, I think makes it worthy of a study.”

More here