In the past few weeks, the liberal media, the GOP establishment, Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi have been plummeting Newt Gingrich about the ethics charges he faced when he was Speaker of the House. We've noted on many occasions some of the details surrounding the ethics charges, most notably how they were filed by a pinko, liberal crackpot and were designed to distract the Republican Party, which had just taken the majority of the House after 40-years of Democrat control. It should come as no surprise that the facts are notably absent from conversations on this topic, particularly by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. It's about time that we get some of the facts straight: Newt Gingrich was eventually exonerated of all charges.
As we've stated, in a Romney vs. Gingrich battle, we support Newt. Mitt is too liberal and too obsessed with the idea of holding power that a Romney administration would not be up to fixing the major problems facing America. With that being said, it's time to set the record straight on the ethics charges filed against Newt and how everyone attacking him for them are being intellectually dishonest.
Byron York from The Washington Examiner wrote a terrific piece on the situation. Below is an excerpt, but the article is must read, not just to defend against Romney, but the liberal media and the socialist Nancy Pelosi, who continues to claim she has inside information on the situation. She's just an old bag that's senile.
At the center of the controversy was a course Gingrich taught from 1993 to 1995 at two small Georgia colleges. The wide-ranging class, called "Renewing American Civilization," was conceived by Gingrich and financed by a tax-exempt organization called the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Gingrich maintained that the course was a legitimate educational enterprise; his critics contended that it had little to do with learning and was in fact a political exercise in which Gingrich abused a tax-exempt foundation to spread his own partisan message.
The Gingrich case was driven in significant part by a man named Ben Jones. An actor and recovered alcoholic who became famous for playing the dim-witted Cooter in the popular 1980s TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, Jones ran for Congress as a Democrat from Georgia in 1988. He won and served two terms. He lost his bid for re-election after re-districting in 1992, and tried again with a run against Gingrich in 1994. Jones lost decisively, and after that, it is fair to say he became obsessed with bringing Gingrich down.
Two days before Election Day 1994, with defeat in sight, Jones hand-delivered a complaint to the House ethics committee (the complaint was printed on "Ben Jones for Congress" stationery). Jones asked the committee to investigate the college course, alleging that Gingrich "fabricated a 'college course' intended, in fact, to meet certain political, not educational, objectives." Three weeks later, Jones sent the committee 450 pages of supporting documents obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act.
That was the beginning of the investigation. Stunned by their loss of control of the House -- a loss engineered by Gingrich -- House Democrats began pushing a variety of ethics complaints against the new Speaker. Jones' complaint was just what they were looking for.
There's no doubt the complaint was rooted in the intense personal animus Jones felt toward Gingrich. In 1995, I sat down with Jones for a talk about Gingrich, and without provocation, Jones simply went off on the Speaker. "He's just full of s--t," Jones told me. "He is. I mean, the guy's never done a damn thing, he's never worked a day in his life, he's never hit a lick at a snake. He's just a bulls--t artist. I mean, think about it. What has this guy ever done in his life?…Gingrich has never worked. He's never had any life experience. He's very gifted in his way at a sort of rhetorical terrorism, and he's gifted in his way at being a career politician, someone who understands how that system works and how to get ahead in it, which is everything that he has derided for all these years. So I think he's a hypocrite, and I think he's a wuss, and I don't mind saying that to him or whoever. To his mother -- I don't care."
At that point, Jones leaned over to speak directly into my recorder. Raising his voice, he declared: "HE'S THE BIGGEST A--HOLE IN AMERICA!"
Jones and his partner in the Gingrich crusade, Democratic Rep. David Bonior -- they had been basketball buddies in the House gym -- pushed the case ceaselessly. Under public pressure, the Ethics Committee -- made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats -- took up the case and hired an outside counsel, Washington lawyer James Cole, to conduct the investigation.
Again, it's important to point out that a Marxist and recovering alcoholic with a personal vendetta against Newt Gingrich was beyond the ethics charges. Romney should stop repeating the lies.
Chuck Justice is the editor-in-chief for Habledash.
