"The Old Guard" in the Republican Party has it in for Newt Gingrich, according to the New York Times, and Newt himself.
Please pass me the smelling salts. I am faint from the very idea of Newt Gingrich, former Speaker, denouncing people now in office as "The Old Guard" or "the Establishment."
The original Old Guard referred to Napoleon's most trusted troops. It was used in 1952 in the Republican Party nominating process to refer to the Middle Western conservatives and their southern (unelected) GOP allies. Eisenhower's overcame this Old Guard.
But then Eisenhower's crowd--inheritors of the New York Republican organization, and its national allies, that was put together by Gov. Thomas E. Dewey. By the 60s they were being described by the Goldwater conservatives as the "establishment". That establishment, with media supporters such as The New York Herald Tribune and Henry Luce's Time and Life, lost. Geoffrey Kabaservice tells the story in the new book, Rule and Ruin.
However, the term "establishment" was first borrowed from the English, who used it in the 50s and 60s to denote the leaders of historic institutions in England that held power by right of inheritance and "old school ties" (who you know). Included were aristocrats, landed gentry and "old boys" from Oxford and Cambridge prominent in the private clubs where wealthy people relaxed.
Richard Rovere in The New Yorker used the term in the 60s to describe the entrenched bi-partisan East Coast elites--also old school, inherited money, products of the old boy network in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and groups like the Council on Foreign Relations. That was before Bill Buckley and Goldwaterites dusted it off for use in a Republican context.
In reality, what the terms "Old Guard" and "Establishment" mean in a Republican context today is mainly that my opponent has more support from people who actually hold office and lead organizations than I do.
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