Thomas would ultimately be confirmed to the Court, but many Republican staffers and operatives found their view of politics as a form of warfare permanently cemented by the Thomas hearings—famously described by the justice himself as a “high-tech lynching.” To them, Newt Gingrich was a reaction to, not the first cause of, ugly political tactics. Similarly, many Republicans began to feel that political reporters, having opted for sensationalism over hard-nosed reporting, could no longer be trusted as dispassionate chroniclers of American public life.
