If you've noticed Newt Gingrich popping up in the media a lot lately, it's for the usual reason: He's looking to make money, apparently by peddling the same line of GOP attack politics he once feared was becoming a parody of itself.

Gingrich has been promoting the book he released on May 15, titled To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular Socialist Machine:

You can probably figure out what the book is about from its none-too-subtle subtitle. Gingrich does not like the Obama administration, which is apparently both secular and socialist.

That sort of rhetoric is pretty inflammatory. Designed to provoke. Attack politics, you might say.

Here's Gingrich in a December 2008 New York Times article discussing Republican efforts to challenge then-President-elect Obama:

“I think the country is so tired right now of a style of Republican attack politics that has become a caricature of itself, they instinctively go, 'I'm tired of that,' ” said Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former speaker of the House. “It's ineffective against Barack Obama right now. The country is faced with serious problems and is about to have a brand new president. You'd have to be irrational not to want the new president to succeed.”

Now, I suppose Gingrich could say that he's been so shocked by President Obama's agenda in the intervening 17 months that an all-out effort to counter it is necessary. Fine.

But can he really argue with a straight face that using a lightly revamped version of the trusty old “godless communist” epithet to describe Obama is anything other than the exact same style of “Republican attack politics that has become a caricature of itself” that he was talking about in 2008?