Newt Gingrich Is Why America Can't Have Nice Things

[joeybee12]

WASHINGTON -- There's something disconcerting about watching Newt Gingrich take the stage to deliver a policy speech in 2014.

To most Americans, Gingrich is a charming curiosity: His latest stint with public relevancy was a quixotic 2012 presidential bid in which he visited many of the nation's finest zoos and advocated the establishment of lunar colonies.*

But on another level, Gingrich's Tuesday speech on housing before the Bipartisan Policy Center epitomizes the soft corruption of Washington elites at their worst.

As Speaker of the House in 1995, Gingrich opted to shut down the federal government rather than cut a budget deal with President Bill Clinton. He defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in Congress, and after leaving Capitol Hill received more than $1.6 million in consulting fees for Freddie -- during years in which the mortgage giant took on heavy risks that ended with a government rescue. In Tuesday's speech, Gingrich had the audacity to warn about the dangers of too-big-to-fail institutions backed by government guarantees -- and not one person in the auditorium at the Washington Renaissance Hotel dared to cry foul in his presence.

How does such a man become an expert on either bipartisanship or housing? The unfortunate answer is the third silent partner in the contemporary Beltway understanding of bipartisanship: corporate America.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/16/newt-gingrich-and-julian-castro-housing_n_5832116.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

I love the title of this article.

[Enthusiast]

1. Newt Gingrich is another Republican POS.