"From the moment he entered politics, Newt Gingrich was laser-focused on one goal: to regain control of the House of Representatives and, as a result, to facilitate a conservative shift in American society. To achieve this goal he overturned long-held Congressional norms. In a June 1978 speech, he said that what the Republicans needed was not "another generation of cautious, prudent, careful, bland, irrelevant, quasi-leaders" but individuals "willing...