The media used words like "bombshell" and "shock" to describe Newt's resignation.

That just shows the degree to which the media buy into their own character assassinations. They villify him and misrepresent everything he stands for, and then they act surprised when he simply does the right thing.

I also get a little tickled when I see liberals dancing on his grave. Assuming that the remaining Republican leaders haven't gone completely insane, he will still influence party strategy, and he'll probably be a lot more effective in a less visible role.

Some of you liberals out there ought to write in and tell us why you hate this man so much. It's supposed to be conservatives who are so hate-filled and mean-spirited, if you believe James Carvill and other spin masters.

Why Democratic Party leaders hate him is easy to explain. He escaped the plantation. When he went to Congress in 1978, he didn't play by the rules of that time, which were that Republicans were the loyal opposition. They sat quietly and voted "no" and made an occasional speech about the evils of welfare and the need for a balanced budget.

It took Newt only 16 years, a short period in Washington time, to turn the established order upside down, and along the way he caught the speaker of the House, Jim Wright, in unquestionably illegal campaign practices and forced Wright's resignation.

Very early in his career, as part of a new breed of Republicans profiled in David Broder's book "The Changing of the Guard," he also played a key part in convincing conservative Democrats to vote that way on a deep tax cut. Tip O'Neill, who was speaker at that time, was unable to stop the tax cut, even with a healthy majority and his own hurculean effort to strong-arm young conservatives to vote with the party leadership.

In short, Gingrich managed to take power and money away from the elite Democratic leadership and give them back to ordinary citizens.

Unforgivable.

Now many Republicans are blaming Gingrich for the party's poor showing in last week's election, and he does share some of the blame.

What happened nationally was fairly neutral, except in the context of what usually happens. There was little change. Republicans still control Congress... slightly. What usually happens, though, is that in a non-presidential election year the party that doesn't control the White House solidifies its control of the House and Senate by picking up at least a handful of seats in each.

In that context, it was a devastating loss.

Pundits seem to be falling all over themselves insisting that Lewinski backlash had nothing to do with it, but methinks they doth protest too much. It may not have accounted for everything that happened, but I feel certain that anger at Republicans for the media's obsession with Lewinski added at least a few percentage points to the Democrat vote in many races, and in some cases that was enough.

It wasn't Republicans focusing all their energies on Lewinski. It was the media, myself included. Congress has gone about its business over the last six months, just like before, but they couldn't get press coverage for the work they were doing to save their (political) lives... literally.

But you can't lay the whole thing on the media's obsession, either. It's like blaming the referee when your team loses. The referee can't throw passes or carry the ball, and the media isn't required to be the Congressional PR agency.

Republicans could have called a press conference along about last August and trotted out a list of bills recently passed, plus issues being dealt with daily like Social Security, tax reform and others. They could have complained about the Lewinski-centrism of the press, just like the Democrats often did, and asked for coverage of the other important business they were conducting.

In a dozen other ways, they could have used their collective intelligence to combat the momentum of what was happening. And truth be told, I think many of them actually believed that all the attention to the president's perjury and other problems would help them energize their base.

It didn't. It just energized Democrats who normally wouldn't have bothered to vote in an off year.

Personally I think it's unrealistic to ask one person to fight two battles. The speaker of the House is expected to advance the party's program of work to push bills through Congress. He is also expected to be the chief political strategist and handler of the press.

Considering the fact that he doesn't have a large enough majority to override the veto, Gingrich has done an amazingly good job on the legislative part of his job.

But he has failed to develop an effective strategy for letting the country know just how much has been accomplished, and he has been beaten in several key public perception battles by Br'er Prez.

When I went to work for Gingrich briefly in 1980-81, the first thing he said to me was that he didn't go through all the pain of getting elected merely to go to Washington and bring back the pork for his district. He wanted to fundamentally change the way business was conducted in Washington, and change the direction of public policy in the nation to replace the Welfare State with an Opportunity Society.

I'm sure as he leaves office he has a long list of goals not yet checked off, but from the average person's perspective, he has changed the landscape more than anyone could ever have hoped.

Now he is leaving in order to keep the party from destroying the work he has done.