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What happened to the ethics charges against Newt Gingrich?

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Here are the facts from Legal Insurrection.

Excerpt:

So Romney is going on attack.  The centerpiece will be Newt Gingrich’s consent to a single ethics violation (out of 84 charged) in the 1990s.  The process was highly politicized by Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi.  Newt ultimately was vindicated by the IRS on the issue, but you wouldn’t know it from Romney’s speech yesterday in Florida:

“Speaker Gingrich has also been a leader,” the former  Massachusetts governor said. “He was a leader for four years as speaker of the  House. And at the end of four years, it was proven that he was a failed leader  and he had to resign in disgrace. I don’t know whether you knew that, he  actually resigned after four years, in disgrace.

Romney continued:

“He was investigated over an ethics panel and had to make a  payment associated with that and then his fellow Republicans, 88 percent of his  Republicans voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich. He has not had a record of  successful leadership.”

In 1999, Brent Bozell wrote a great column about how the media covered up Newt’s vindication, Newt Is Vindicated, But Nobody Knows It:

The judgment is in. After three and a half years of investigation, the IRS has cleared Newt Gingrich and his allied nonprofit groups of any violation of the tax laws in the controversy over his television history course “Renewing American Civilization.”

So after having run countless news reports highlighting the accusations that ultimately forced Gingrich to pay a $300,000 fine, did the media correct the record with a decent airing of the decision? Are you ready? ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted exactly zero seconds to Newt Gingrich’s vindication. Only CNN’s Brooks Jackson filed a decent TV report, on the early-evening show “Inside Politics.” …

Gingrich issued a statement that clearly expressed his feelings: “I consider this a full and complete vindication. I urge my colleagues to go back and read their statements and watch how they said them, with no facts, based on nothing more than a desire to politically destroy a colleague.”

But the damage hadn’t been done simply by devious politicians like Bonior, but by journalists. In the face of Newt’s innocence, some reporters couldn’t muster even a regret.

Bozell followed up that column last month, noting that the media continues to hide Newt’s vindication.

It has been 4,689 days since the IRS formally cleared Newt Gingrich of any  violation of tax law.  It’s been 4,689 days since ABC, CBS, and NBC have  had the opportunity to report it. What the heck.  Why not today?  Now  is the time for these networks to report the truth for once.  The networks  owe it to the American people to report the fact that in 1999 the IRS completely  vindicated Gingrich.

Between December 15, 1996 and January 31, 1997 the network morning and  evening newscasts filed a staggering 244 stories. Total number of network  stories on the news that Newt was completely innocent? Zero. That’s beyond  pathetic. Oh and what about CNN?  We found that the cable  network filed one — count ‘em, one — story. They’re probably exhausted by all  that effort, so we’ll let them off the hook.

Now you can add to the list the Romney campaign, which uses the worst of Nancy Pelosi’s machinations to its advantage, and like the mainstream media, hides the truth.

What does it say about Romney that he would smear Newt with charges that were obviously politically motivated – pressed by radical leftist Democrat Nancy Pelosi? Well, it says that Romney is desperate and lacks honesty and integrity.

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Mitt Romney’s tax returns would make him lose the election to Obama

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Wall Street Banks contributions to Mitt Romney
Wall Street banks make huge contributions to Mitt Romney

From The Hill. (H/T Riehl Worldview)

Excerpt:

It’s important not to overstate the perils Romney faces. He is still by far the best-funded candidate in the race. He has a state-by-state infrastructure that is the envy of his rivals. Even if he were to lose Saturday’s South Carolina primary, he would  likely remain the overall favorite to clinch the nomination.

But the procession of errors has been striking nonetheless — and it has raised concerns among many in the GOP about his vulnerabilities in a general election contest with President Obama.

Most of Romney’s awkwardness has revolved around questions about his wealth. During a heated exchange during a debate last month, he ill-advisedly offered to bet Perry $10,000 that his own account of what he had written in one of his books was correct. Perry declined, saying he was “not in the betting business,” but the episode heightened perceptions that Romney is out of touch with most Americans.

The same pattern keeps cropping up. Earlier this week, he was asked about the effective tax rate he pays on his income, and managed to injure himself twice in the space of a few sentences. First, he acknowledged that his tax rate was “probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything.” He then added: “I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”

The first claim was almost certainly true. Romney’s income is believed to come chiefly from long-term investments rather than earned income, and that would indeed make him liable for capital gains tax levied at a 15 percent rate. But it still places the multimillionaire in a more lightly taxed band than many voters — something which Newt Gingrich tried to take advantage of with his mocking proposal to introduce a “Mitt Romney 15 percent flat tax.”

Perhaps even worse was Romney’s “not very much” comment. His latest financial disclosure form, which covered the period from February 2010 to February 2011, revealed that he earned $374,327 for speeches. The sum is approximately seven times the median household income in the United States.

Those remarks had been preceded by a televised debate at which he gave a muddled response about whether he would release his tax returns.

Romney flubbed the tax-return question for a second time at a debate last Thursday, eliciting boos from the crowd when he said he would “maybe” follow the example of his late father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, who released 12 years of tax returns when running for the presidency in 1968.

Romney’s mangled syntax on these occasions seems symptomatic of a wider personal unease in discussing his finances. GOP consultants say he needs to get over that discomfort if he is to prove an effective candidate.

Another concern that I have is that Mitt Romney has $20-100 million dollars in his retirement account.

Excerpt:

Like many Americans, Mitt Romney has an individual retirement account. Unlike most Americans, Mr. Romney has between $20.7 million and $101.6 million in it, a big chunk of his fortune.

Experts on estate planning said it is highly unusual to accumulate such a considerable sum in an IRA, an investment vehicle restricted by annual contribution limits. It appears that Mr. Romney’s grew so large mostly because it holds investments in Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he helped start.

[…]Mr. Romney is one of the richest presidential candidates in decades, and his GOP opponents increasingly are trying to turn wealth into a liability. President Barack Obama is expected to do the same if the former Massachusetts governor wraps up the nomination. Mr. Romney’s tax liability has emerged as a debating point in the GOP nominating contest, a proxy for a bigger argument over who should shoulder the nation’s tax burden.

In recent days, Mr. Romney’s rivals have pressed him to release his tax returns. They have attacked him for his role at Bain Capital, the source of his wealth. When Mr. Romney revealed Tuesday that his effective federal income-tax rate had been about 15% in recent years, both the White House and GOP candidates used the number as a cudgel.

[…]Michael Whitty, a lawyer at Vedder Price in Chicago who advises private-equity executives, said it is impossible to determine from Mr. Romney’s public disclosures how the IRA grew so large. Based on its listed holdings, which include many Bain Capital vehicles, Mr. Whitty theorizes Mr. Romney may have invested in Bain funds through a 401(k)-type plan, or directed some of his Bain holdings into such a plan, which he then rolled into an IRA.

How is he going to explain that? This might be one of the reasons why Romney is not releasing his tax returns. He needs to be pounded on this by Gingrich and Santorum until he drops out – we can’t afford to choose a nominee who has no hope of beating Barack Obama.

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John Hawkins writes the most scathing anti-Romney column EVER

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Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator linked to the Anti-Romney post, and he called it “The Most Scathing Anti-Romney Column, Ever”. The actual title of the post is “Five Ways Conservatives Will Have to Sell Their Souls if Romney Wins”.

Excerpt:

If you were trying to come up with the most atrocious candidate imaginable to go toe-to-toe with Barack Obama in 2012, you couldn’t do much better than Mitt Romney. He was an unpopular moderate governor who lost 2 out of the 3 major elections he’s run in and whose signature issue Romneycare is an enormous failure. Moreover, he’s so uninspiring that he makes Bob Dole look like Ronald Reagan and that’s before you consider his incessant flip-flopping that makes it impossible to really know where he stands on any issue.

Romney’s candidacy also runs counter to almost every political trend in the book right now. He’s the antithesis of everything the Tea Party stands for — a moderate establishment-endorsed, principle-free Rockefeller Republican. On the other hand, he’s like a bad guy straight out of central casting for the Occupy Wall Street crowd, a conscience-free 1 percenter who makes $10,000 bets and lectures the public about how corporations are people — while hordes of poor and middle class Americans that he fired trail in his wake telling tales of woe about how Romney made their lives into a living hell.

At one time, I thought both Gingrich and Perry were more electable than Romney. I have, however, reassessed and now believe Gingrich, Perry, Santorum, and even Huntsman, who just left the race, are ALL more electable than Mitt. It’s also worth noting that all of those candidates, including Huntsman, are more conservative than Romney. It’s mind-boggling to consider the fact that if Romney wins, the conservative base will have chosen the guy behind Romneycare over the man behind the Contract with America, America’s premier social conservative, and the best job-creating governor in America, all of whom would also be more electable.

Here we are in what may be, forgive me for the cliché, the most important election of our lifetimes and the GOP may end up choosing a candidate who’s one part Charlie Crist and one part John Kerry as our nominee. If that’s the case, conservatives should certainly vote for him over Obama. After all, Mitt Romney will undoubtedly often do the wrong thing if he becomes President, but Barack Obama will almost always fail the country. So Romney would definitely be the lesser of two evils.

Yet and still, conservatives will probably have to pay a big price if Romney becomes the nominee. Barring an unforeseen miracle, we’re not going to see someone who was a third rate, unpopular moderate governor become a great, popular, and conservative President. The idea that Republicans in Congress will keep Romney in line isn’t borne out by anything that has happened in the last decade. During the Bush years, time and time again, conservatives in Congress abandoned their principles to follow Bush’s lead. It has been much the same under Obama. Many Democrats were willing to take votes that ended their careers because they felt compelled to stick by Barack. Mitt would have little to fear from the Tea Party or the rest of the conservative base either. After all, his thinking will be, if grassroots conservatives still had any sway in the Republican Party, he wouldn’t be the nominee. What are they going to do after he gets the nomination? Vote for Obama? Same goes if he gets elected. No matter how Nixonian Mitt turns out to be, conservatives will still view our own Massachusetts version of Arnold Schwarzenegger as preferable to whatever socialist the Democrats run against him in 2016.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I am now cross-posting some of my posts at John Hawkins’ Right Wing News, since he gave me permission to guest blog there. Right Wing News is one of the top conservative blogs.