The same is true of leadership at all levels. The US political situation isn't looking that great because of the popularity of all kinds of jerk behavior that has become the norm. Ironically, Twitter itself is partly responsible for that, as crapping on your political opponents has become more important than having policy proposals or solving problems. It's a downward spiral when we accept shitty behaviors from leadership, because of exactly this copycat tendency of people--they emulate behavior of elites, sometimes unconsciously.
> But Gingrich had a plan. The way he saw it, Republicans would never be able to take back the House as long as they kept compromising with the Democrats out of some high-minded civic desire to keep congressional business humming along. His strategy was to blow up the bipartisan coalitions that were essential to legislating, and then seize on the resulting dysfunction to wage a populist crusade against the institution of Congress itself. “His idea,” says Norm Ornstein, a political scientist who knew Gingrich at the time, “was to build toward a national election where people were so disgusted by Washington and the way it was operating that they would throw the ins out and bring the outs in.”
> Gingrich recruited a cadre of young bomb throwers—a group of 12 congressmen he christened the Conservative Opportunity Society—and together they stalked the halls of Capitol Hill, searching for trouble and TV cameras. Their emergence was not, at first, greeted with enthusiasm by the more moderate Republican leadership. They were too noisy, too brash, too hostile to the old guard’s cherished sense of decorum. They even looked different—sporting blow-dried pompadours while their more camera-shy elders smeared Brylcreem on their comb-overs.
> Gingrich and his cohort showed little interest in legislating, a task that had heretofore been seen as the primary responsibility of elected legislators. Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who had been elected to Congress a year before Gingrich, marveled at the way the hard-charging Georgian rose to prominence by ignoring the traditional path taken by new lawmakers. “My idea was to work within the committee structure, take care of my district, and just pay attention to the legislative process,” Livingston told me. “But Newt came in as a revolutionary.”
> For revolutionary purposes, the House of Representatives was less a governing body than an arena for conflict and drama. And Gingrich found ways to put on a show. He recognized an opportunity in the newly installed C-span cameras, and began delivering tirades against Democrats to an empty chamber, knowing that his remarks would be beamed to viewers across the country.
Newt Gingrich and Roger Ailes have done far more damage to political discourse than anything social media could hope to do.
Yes, everything is a conspiracy orchestrated by ${group you don't like} for ${nefarious purpose}. There's no way that people legitimately change their own views.
Stating a goal of ending bi-partisan politics and following through on enacting that goal all in public in a very documented way isn't a conspiracy. There is a direct connection between the dysfunction in politics today and the explicit and public actions taken by conservatives to make it this way.
