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Oh, happy day – The Newt is in! Move over, Donnie Trump, the contest for Goofiest Guy in the GOP Presidential Primary just got goofier with Newt Gingrich’s leap into the fray.
The former House speaker touts himself as a “futurist” and a deep-thinking “transformationalist.” Indeed he says he has transformed himself from a serial adulterer into a family man – just in time for the primaries. Newt could be a hoot – except that he’s a carefully-constructed fraud. Gingrich is and always was little more than an old-time, business-as-usual corporate hack, and that’s what he would be in the White House. Since he left Congress in 1999,the essence of his K-Street business empire (known as “Newt Inc.”) is to work the backrooms of the Capitol to get legislative favors for corporations, which reward him richly for his efforts.
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In other words, he is a Washington lobbyist. But that’s not a great job title for one who now wants to pose as a champion of the average Joe, so Newt heatedly rejects it: “I am not a lobbyists,” he barked in a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Really? Let’s call the roll of a few of those who’ve ponied up hundreds of thousands of dollars to have Gingrich work Congress for them: AstraZeneca, Blue Cross, the ethanol industry, Freddie Mac, IBM, Microsoft, and UPS. These and dozens of other corporate powers have praised Gingrich for opening doors and opening the public treasury to benefit them, yet he refuses to register as the paid influence peddler that he is. Instead, he does a delicate little dance around rules that everyone else must obey when lobbying Congress on behalf of paying clients. He is not technically lobbying, he explains, because his legislative effort “benefits the country at large.”
Wow – not only is Newt a fraud, he’s also a megalomaniac.
“Despite Running A Health Industry ‘Trade Association,’ Gingrich Says He Will Not Register As A Lobbyist,” www.thinkprogress.org, February 27, 2010.
“Big Bad Wolffe: Different Standards for Moonlighting Television Pundits,” www.mediaite.com, August 12, 2009.
“Newt Gingrich ‘Sharing Resources, Coordinating Efforts” With Oil Lobby,” www.thinkprogress.org, February 23, 2010.
“Newt Gingrich faces questions about consulting job and support for biofuels,” < href="http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/04/25/4312/newt-gingrich-faces-questions-about-consulting-job-and-support-biofuels"target="_blank"> www.iwatchnews.org, April 25, 2011.
“Gingrich’s Secret Weapon: Newt Inc.” www.wsj.com, May 9, 2011.