Friend of Jack: The hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich is, and always has been, magnificent to behold. And he never disappoints. In fact, his latest turn is positively jaw-dropping. Gingrich, who is floating a bid for the presidency in 2008, is now positioning himself as a critic of the Republican culture of corruption that he created over a decade ago:
Gingrich … was the architect of the so-called K Street Project, which is at the center of the current corruption scandals. As the [Washington] Post reported in 2002, “Starting in the mid-1990s, some Republicans, including then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and [Representative Tom] DeLay, have advocated tracking the political affiliation of lobbyists, as part of an effort to place more conservatives on K Street.” In return, K Street would help the GOP ram through corporate-written legislation and fill GOP coffers with campaign contributions.
It worked perfectly. The American Prospect reported in 2000 that within the first six months of Gingrich’s tenure as Speaker, “the Republican leadership introduced a spate of controversial bills gutting regulatory agencies” and that “business contributions more than doubled from what they had been during a comparable period in 1993.”
By 1998 Gingrich wasn’t even trying to hide the K Street Project, as he “held up a vote on intellectual property legislation in protest of the Electronics Industry Association’s plan to hire a Democrat to run the group,” according to the Post. In fact, when Gingrich resigned at the end of 1998, the Hill newspaper ran a story headlined NEWT’S DEPARTURE DEFLATES KEY LOBBYISTS, which detailed the unsuccessful effort by Gingrich and corporate lobbyists to help him hold on to power and preserve K Street’s bridge into Congress.
Gingrich has made it clear he’s ready to lead the GOP lynch mob that is after disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff – but Abramoff was a political operative asociated with Newt back in the day. In fact it was Abramoff’s close ties with Speaker Gingrich in 1994 that got him hired at Preston, Gates & Ellis, where the seeds of today’s scandals were planted.
Of course, these example of Gingrichian hypocrisy pale next to his Clinton era shenanigans, especialy when he was leading the GOP assault on President Clinton’s adulterous affair while concurrently carrying on an adulterous affair with Callista Bisek, a former staff member. In 1999, Gingrich lost the speakership because of this affair and left the House in disgrace. (And his wife at the time, Marianne Ginther, should have this one coming. In 1981, Newt dumped his first wife – who had recently been diagnosed with cancer – for Ginther.)
Which brings to mind the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that then-Speaker Gingrich helped pass into law in 1996. DOMA was an attempt by the GOP to put a wedge between Clinton and some of his most loyal supporters. The Republicans’ timing underscored the cynicism of their effort: DOMA was scheduled so that President Clinton had to sign it in September – just as the final heat in the presidential campaign was starting.
Gingrich was just one of several known or soon-to-be revealed adulterers among the men who enacted DOMA; others included then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS), then-Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), who drafted the legislation and of course our own President Clinton who signed the bill.
Of course, Newt Gingrich will never be president – not because he’s a hypocrite but because he has no friends or supporters on the left and an ever-growing army of enemies on the right. So I hope he does run. It would be fun during the primaries watching Newt taking incoming flak from his fellow Republicans.
