Gingrich’s Colleagues Prod Him To Pipe Down

With many of his colleagues fearful that he is hurting the Republican revolution he helped create, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., has decided to lower his public profile in favor of less controversial Republicans.

Gingrich returned from the Thanksgiving holiday persuaded that an outburst over his back-of-the-plane seat on Air Force One and the connection he drew between a grisly murder in Illinois and Democrat-backed social programs required him, as he told his colleagues this week, to bench himself.

Gingrich also concluded, after several Republican friends went to him with their concerns, that he had become far too deeply enmeshed in the details of the ongoing budget negotiations and too eager to be the party’s principal voice in the public debate with the White House over budget priorities.

“He feels he’s made some mistakes,” one Republican official said Friday. “That he hasn’t been disciplined.”

Gingrich’s own description, as he put it this week to his colleagues, was that he had “thrown a few interceptions” and it was time put himself on the bench and let others play. The account of the meeting first appeared in Friday’s Washington Times.

Some Republicans fear that Gingrich’s unpopularity - polls show that nearly two in three Americans disapprove of the job he is doing - has become such a liability that he threatens the party politically.

Republicans are worried that Gingrich’s rising unpopularity could affect the outcome of the special election campaign in California for the seat of Rep. Norm Mineta, D-Calif. Republican Tom Campbell has seen his lead plummet.