Letter: The great divide started with Gingrich

I hope the recent letter-writer saying liberals are sabotaging President Trump read the column by conservative David Brooks, “The coming incompetence crisis.”

The opposition to Trump is a reaction by both parties to an incompetent president.

Regarding our country’s ever-increasing divide, I give a great deal of blame to Newt Gingrich with his “list of words to use” (which were combative), the “alternative reality/family values” program named FOX News, and individuals who create fake news for profit and spread it by social media.

Gingrich is like the cat who swallowed the canary. He sits back and watches how he has manipulated our country into becoming as divided as Shias and Sunnis. As a political operative in the 1970s and ’80s, he is the origin of the “two Santa Clause strategy.”

His idea was that in order for his party to compete with the “Santa” gifts from Democrats (Social Security and Medicare), the gift from his party’s “Santa” would be tax cuts in lieu of fiscal responsibility. As Poppy Bush said, “you can’t have it both ways.”

So did Gingrich’s strategy help our citizens or his party, because his strategy has continued under Bush and Trump? In Poppy Bush’s words: “voodoo economics.”

This story was originally published April 11, 2017 at 5:16 PM with the headline "Letter: The great divide started with Gingrich."