The state of Nevada Republicans in the Legislature’s lower house, the Assembly, is not at all unlike the state of Republicans in the United States House of Representatives back in the late 1970’s: Lousy.

But back then, a fire-breathing conservative junior congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich entered the public arena, looked at the condition of the GOP, and decided to do something about it. 

Republicans back then were suffering from a serious case of “Battered Republican Syndrome.”  They were whipped puppy dogs.  As former Congressman Bob Walker (R-Pa.) explained in a recent Washington Post op-ed, GOP leaders in the House “had become quite comfortable in their minority status and saw little chance they would ever become the majority.”

Yep.  Just like Republican leaders in the Nevada Assembly today. 

Walker recanted that Gingrich realized that “to create a true conservative agenda, the (Republican) party needed to focus on becoming the majority.”  How?  Not by rolling over and having their tummies rubbed by the Democrats.  By “attacking spending bills and efforts to expand government, some of which the (GOP) establishment had endorsed.”

Indeed, in a 1978 speech to College Republicans, Newt noted that “one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire, but are lousy in politics.”

Yep.  Just like Republicans in the Nevada Assembly.

Indeed, Walker notes that before Newt and the conservatives could “challenge the liberal welfare state,” they first had to challenge the “old bulls who dominated the (Republican) party in the House” who were playing patty-cake with the other team.

Yep.  Just like Republicans in the Nevada Assembly.

As such, when then-President George Herbert Walker Bush reneged on his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge in 1991, Gingrich refused to sign onto the deal “and led the Republican opposition to the settlement in the House,” earning the everlasting enmity and scorn of moderate “establishment” leaders.

Yep.  Just like the few conservatives in the Nevada Assembly who voted against last year’s $620 million “deal” to extend the 2009 tax hikes which were supposed to “sunset” last June.

As we all know, for standing up against moderate Republican leaders and fighting the left instead of rolling over and going along to get along, Gingrich’s Republicans were rewarded in 1994 by voters who embraced their limited government/low taxation agenda as outlined in the Contract with America.  The Gingrich-led GOP successfully accomplished what everyone said was impossible.

If only there was a Gingrich-like leader who could lead Assembly Republicans out of the Nevada political wilderness in 2012, maybe we could get this state fixed.

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Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com.  He may be reached at chuck@citizenoutreach.com.