SOCIALISM WATCH : Nuclear Newt

House Speaker Newt Gingrich is advising corporate executives to pull their advertising from what he calls the Establishment press because so many newspaper editorial boards harbor “socialists” who are the “mortal enemy” of the program he is trying to push through Congress.

While the Georgia Republican refuses to identify those in the enemy camp, he does infer their existence from editorials he says have a “pro-government, anti-free-market bias.” When Tony Blankley, his press secretary, was asked for clarification he helpfully suggested that a socialist is one who believes that raising or lowering taxes has no effect on economic conduct. Whether that definition usefully advances the debate over fiscal policy, others can decide. From our own perhaps skewed perspective it seems we are dealing here with some pretty mushy concepts.

What’s anything but mushy--what is concrete and unmistakable--is Gingrich’s apparent advocacy of economic intimidation to try to silence those in the press who dare to question any aspect of his political program. To challenge or disagree with Gingrich’s ideology seems to have become in his mind prima facie evidence of socialist views or antipathy to the free market. As long as we’re loosely tossing labels around we might as well attach one to that kind of off-the-wall thinking. It’s a variety of Beltway bombast, and while that perhaps has some place in a pluralistic, free-swinging, no-holds-barred democracy, sometimes a Prof. Gingrich lecture needs to be taken with a few grains of salt and an aspirin in the morning.