If memory serves, Dick Army in the dead of night inserted language into a bill giving amnesty to vaccine makers that protected them from being sued by concerned parents that were misled by a UK doctor over mercury content as a preservative. Dick Army was a Congressman who supported the Tea Party loonies on the far right. 24 years ago the hybrid seeds of the wierd right and whacky vaccine conspiracies were planted in the politics of America. Jenny McCarthy and other wierdos kept up thier campaign for years. Today when vaccines are even more important the murky history of anti vaccinators has reached a critical mass. Dick Army went on to be a hero of the Tea Party, although Dick was working against their vaccine conspiracy. He was surely rewarded by big pharma and was a pioneer of groups that were historically insurrectionist friendly like the Tea Party.
I do not give him the credit for the white nationalist nazis or KKK aspects of the current Republican strategy and he did not know how far his Newt Gingrich antics would be amplified but he did start a political fire in the Capitol that night at 3AM. To me it supports Chaos theory about how a small flap of an insect's wings could grow into a deadly storm.