Gingrich and 'Socialist Bureaucrats'

In a post on his new blog at our sister publication, The Atlantic (I never get tired of writing that), Bob Wright looks at the rhetorical tactics of Newt Gingrich, and how he once aimed them directly at career civil servants:

And back in the nineties, when Gingrich used to warn of "socialist bureaucrats," I doubt he actually envisioned many civil servants spending their evenings with a copy of Das Kapital. But bureaucrats and socialists are sufficiently disliked groups that when you put the two labels together you can harvest a great synergy of malice. (Gingrich did, as I recall, tone it down a bit after Timothy McVeigh did exactly what you would expect some nut to do if you talk about socialist bureaucrats for long enough.)

(Photo: Flickr user Gage Skidmore)