Barney Frank blames Newt Gingrich:

The New York Times featured a short interview with Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank in last week’s The New York Times Magazine. Rep. Frank lays it on the line and basically puts the blame for the current political divisiveness at the feet of Newt Gingrich:

NYT: You recently said about Newt Gingrich: “He’s just one of the worst people I know of who didn’t commit violence on somebody.” Did he kill your dog?

Rep Frank: He transformed American politics from one in which people presume the good will of their opponents, even as they disagreed, into one in which people treated the people with whom they disagreed as bad and immoral. He was a kind of McCarthy-ite who succeeded.