Republican's will forgive a great many things when it comes to past activities of their candidates. Whether it be Mitt Romney signing healthcare legislation into law in Massachussetts or John McCain sponsoring his infamous bill with Russ Feingold that trampled free speech, we tend to look at the bigger pictures (we will never forgive one of our members driving off a bridge and leaving a young woman to die while he called his lawyer, for the record).
But Newt Gingrich taking $1.6 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is one thing we will never forgive and forget:
Mr. Gingrich has faced many questions recently about the more than $1.6 million in consulting fees he got from Freddie Mac since leaving Congress in 1999. But part of the relationship started years earlier, as records and interviews show that Mr. Gingrich, as House leader in the 1990s, aligned himself with Freddie and Fannie on a number of key issues — defending them in Congress against political attacks, joining with them on housing projects and seeing top aides go work for them.No, we will never give a man who speaks with two tongues a second chance. Hypocrisy is as much a part of Gingrich's psyche as is infidelity. Bad enough Newt took the money from the two firms that share the greatest responsibility in the housing market implosion and worse that he assisted them while Speaker but to take our tax money for "consulting fees" while espousing smaller government and other conservative talking points is the end of the line with regard to supporting him. Freddie sand Fannie have taken %150-billion of our tax dollars and pissed it away on mismanagement and bad bets. Newt got a slice of that and smiled as he cashed the check.
While Mr. Gingrich has minimized his past connections to the two closely related companies on the campaign trail, his Congressional record shows that his political and financial ties to the firms run deeper and farther back than he has acknowledged publicly and, in fact, set the stage for the lucrative consulting work that followed.
Mr. Gingrich, whose campaign declined to comment on his ties with Fannie and Freddie while in Congress, has been blistering in his recent criticism of the mortgage finance companies. He has blamed them in part for the 2008 housing collapse, said they should now be “broken up,” and in an October debate he declared that Representative Barney Frank should be “in jail” for associating with lobbyists close to Freddie.
Ask any fiscal conservative the five things they hate the most in government and you'll find Freddie and Fannie in the mix with Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Obamacare.
Gingrich got into bed with the dogs and will just have to deal with the fleas.
Update: In related news, the rats are leaving the sinking USS Newt including the biggest rat of all.
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