Something’s weird, relatively

As if it’s not bad enough that he has his daughter-wife as a special adviser in the White House, what’s the deal with Twitler’s hiring of other relatives of reheated Rethuglicans?

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Super Tuesday

Super?  Really?  Super Tuesday says…

‘Tis the Season for Such Folly

(CNN) – The avalanche of negative campaign ads from Mitt Romney is wearing on rival Newt Gingrich, but he said Thursday he won’t break his pledge to stay positive.

Speaking to Iowa Public Television, the former House speaker said the onslaught of vitriol coming from Romney headquarters jarred with the spirit of the holidays.

“I think it’s counterintuitive,” Gingrich said. “We have an ad that will come up next week where Callista and I are wishing people a Merry Christmas, and we’re talking in a totally positive way. I think if these guys keep up this kind of negative junk, it’s so discordant with the spirit of Christmas.”

Yeah, let’s keep with the spirit of Christmas by saying that poor kids should have to clean toilets for their richer classmates.

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Campaigning for Fun and Profit

From THE HUFFINGTON POST:

Newt Gingrich loves selling himself – both as a presidential hopeful and as a for-profit author.

As he seeks the GOP nomination, the former House speaker frequently combines traditional political campaigning with the sales job for his books and films that has earned him millions. As his rivals on Friday scheduled busy days with voters in early nominating states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, Gingrich planned a single public event: a book signing in the nation’s capital.

(Update: Gingrich’s book signing has been reportedly cancelled due to “public safety concerns.”)

Bill O’Reilly was there with an umbrella?

Gingrich, enjoying a surge in the polls just a month before the first contests are held, prides himself on his non-traditional campaign style. It isn’t clear whether it will pay off politically. But it certainly has not hurt his own income.

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Newt Gingrich on Drugs

From Chris Moody at THE TICKET at YAHOO!:

NAPLES, Fla. — The staff at Books-a-Million didn’t know what hit them.

In preparation for a Saturday morning book signing with Newt Gingrich, the bookstore printed numbered cards for the first 500 people looking for an autograph from the former House speaker and Republican presidential candidate. The store gave out its first card at 8 a.m. on Black Friday–27 hours before Gingrich was scheduled to arrive–and ran out before he stepped in the door. After that, the Gingrich fans had to fend for themselves.

Gingrich spent the two days after Thanksgiving on a campaign swing through Naples, Florida, a wealthy conservative stronghold in the Sunshine State that was, to say the least, extremely welcoming.

…snip…

After his speech, during which he took time to clarify his position on illegal immigration, Gingrich hopped over to a $1,000-per-person fundraiser at a city council member’s home and then spent four hours the next morning at a Books-a-Million, where he brought in 650 people.

After months in the middle tier, Gingrich is the latest presidential candidate not named Mitt to ascend to the top of national polls. And with just five weeks until the first caucus in Iowa, he may have the best chance at being there when it matters. On Sunday, the largest newspaper in New Hampshire, the Union Leader, endorsed Gingrich in the Republican primary.

Although he has been in the public eye for years and seen his share of crowds, this kind of attention is new for Presidential Candidate Newt.

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He didn’t lobby, it was just a hobby!

From Joan Walsh at Salon:

Another day, another story about Newt Gingrich profiteering. Well, three stories, actually.

The Washington Post reported this morning that a Gingrich “think tank,” the Center for Health Transformation, collected at least $37 million from health care industry groups, who were promised “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction” in exchange for their cash. Also in exchange for their cash, perhaps, Gingrich took some interesting positions on health care reform: He supported the “individual mandate” that Americans buy insurance (or post a bond to cover unanticipated illness) as well as measures to encourage “end of life” planning. He ditched both positions, of course, once he realized they were unpopular with the Republican base.

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Mac ‘n Sleaze

From John Cassidy at THE NEW YORKER:

Take the ludicrous suggestion that Freddie Mac, the smaller of the two government-sponsored mortgage giants, may have expected Newt to do some lobbying on its behalf when, in 2006, it paid him the very modest sum of $300,000. Any fair-minded person would agree that Newt quashed this idea during one of last week’s debates. He explained that Freddie’s executives hired him for his expertise as a historian, adding that he warned them to stop lending money to folks who couldn’t repay their loans. In Newt’s own words: “My advice as a historian, when they walked in and said to me, ‘We are now making loans to people who have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything, but that’s what the government wants us to do.’ As I said to them at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible.”

That explanation was more than good enough for me. But darn it if a couple of quibbling scribblers from Bloomberg News didn’t put out a report yesterday, quoting former executives of Freddie Mac saying that Newt was hired “to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf of the company’s public-private structure that would resonate with conservatives seeking to dismantle it.”

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