One of the interesting sidebars of last night’s debate was the fiery exchange between Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich over the latter’s “grandiose” ideas and unstable leadership style. During the course of this rhetorical dustup during which Gingrich took Santorum’s bait and took credit for the Reagan presidency, the defeat of the Soviet Union and the 1994 Republican Congressional victory. While the first two claims are the stuff of self-satire, Gingrich is surely entitled to puff his chest at the memory of his role in the GOP’s taking back the House for the first time in 40 years.
But as Santorum aptly noted, the willingness of some GOP backbenchers — a group that the former Pennsylvania senator was quick to point out included himself — to turn the House Bank scandal into a cause célèbre had as much to do with turning the tide in the years leading up 1994 as any of Gingrich’s plans. Santorum chided Gingrich for knowing about the problem but choosing not to make a stink about it. But, as Politico reports today, there was more to it than just Gingrich’s faulty judgment about whether the scandal had legs.
Alexander Burns of Politico recals that in 1992 the New York Times reported about Gingrich’s involvement in the banking scandal. Apparently, Gingrich was kiting checks along with the worst Democratic scofflaws. His 22 overdrafts including a $9,463 check to the IRS was a major issue in his re-election campaign that year and nearly cost him his seat which the then House Republican Minority held by a razor-thin margin of 982 votes that fall.
Santorum was wrong to imply that the Georgian didn’t get involved in exposing the House Bank scandal because he lacked the moxie to mix up with the Democratic poobahs. In fact, as Gingrich pointed out, he had already played the lead role in taking down former House Speaker Jim Wright. The real reason for Gingrich’s silence was far worse: conflict of interest.
Gingrich said nothing about the bank while Santorum stuck his neck out because he was as guilty as any of the Democrats who were caught bouncing checks at the bank at the taxpayers’ expense.
That information leaves us wondering why, if Santorum was going to bring up the scandal in the course of an attack on Gingrich, he pulled his punch. Wouldn’t it have been far more devastating to rightly accuse Gingrich of complicity in the scandal instead of wrongly accusing him of cowardice?
Newt seems to only recall the good things about his tenure as speaker. He resigned from the House THE VERY DAY HE WAS ELECTED to an 11th term. Why? In the 1998 elections, republicans had the worst midterm performance in 64 years for a party that didn't hold the presidency. Is that any way to treat your district? Newt also keeps saying he was exonerated from wrongdoing in the house scandals….which is only partially true. n nThe man clearly has a problem with the truth. How conservatives can have faith in him escapes me.
Hey Toobin, without Newt Gingrich, there would not have been any investigation of the House Banking Scandal. Newt was not singled out by the House Ethics Committee, he was instrumental in pushing them to conduct the investigation. Far from being "corrupt," he demonstrated even then that he saw the endemic corruption of the House and didn't want to be warped by it. He led the "seven young turks" in getting the Democrat ruled House to pursue the investigation. n nBy the way, you do know that this occurred back in 1992, don't you? You do know that this was all vetted by, not only Congress, but by his own constituents, and found wanting back then, just as it is nothing today. n n22 members of Congress were singled out by the House Committee, 3 Republicans, and 19 Democrats. n nWhy don't you try something else to smear Newt with, since this one is going nowhere.
I think we all would agree that Banking scandal and the Post Office scandal are relatively minor skirmishes involving what congressional members believed to be their privileges as elected members of the most august council in the world. These "privileges" were not nearly as economically beneficial as the "newly discovered" insider trading on the financial exchanges that is supposedly legal under the laws as written. n nSo how is it that that Rick Santorum, et al missed blowing the whistle on this latest kerfuffle way back in the days? My point is that corruption seems to be relative. If everyone is doing it, then what?
Gosh, oldies but goodies, and there was a House Post Office scandal too. Overdraft on franking privileges? who remembers, these things come and go. n nSuppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. n- Mark Twain, a Biography n nt could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. n- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar n
The Democrats are loving every minute of this mud slinging while they come up smelling like roses. Gingrich's video about Romney must have been music to Democrat ears.
Santorum doesn't stand a chance, everyone knows at this point Romney has the race.