The Gingrich campaign has now confirmed a longstanding business relationship that enabled his consulting group to receive between $1.6 and $1.8 million from mortgage giant Freddie Mac. But it wasn't for "lobbying," Newt Gingrich insists. It was for "strategic advice on a wide range of issues."
OK, but then doesn't the payment, AP's Tom Beaumont asked the former House speaker, just remind people that "your background comes from being a Washington insider?"
"It reminds people," Gingrich corrected Beaumont, "that I know a great deal about Washington." And as he continued, "If you want to change Washington, we just tried four [sic] years of amateur ignorance and it didn't work very well, so having some-body who knows Washington might be a really good thing."
Newt Gingrich is certainly right about that. There is no candidate for president who has had more experience in changing Washington than Gingrich. Indeed, there may be no American since James Madison who has had more of an effect in making the institution of Congress what it is today.
For as far too few remember, more than any other living American, it is Newt Gingrich who gave us the current version of our hopelessly dysfunctional Congress — an institution which, according to a New York Times/CBS poll, now has the confidence of 9% of the American people. That monster is his baby, and no one should deny him his parental bragging rights.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/19/opinion/lessig-gingrich-change-washington/index.html
