Friday, November 25, 2011

Gingrich, the Ultimate Beltway Bandit | Consortiumnews

Gingrich, the Ultimate Beltway Bandit Consortiumnews

You maybe should think twice when even Jack Abramoff thinks you’re beneath contempt. Not that Newt Gingrich cares.Abramoff, America’s favorite convicted influence peddler, told NBC’s David Gregory that presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Gingrich is one of those “people who came to Washington, who had public service, and they cash in on it. They use their public service and access to make money.”Ex-House Speaker Newt GingrichNewt, he continued, is “engaged in the exact kind of corruption that America disdains. The very things that anger the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement and everybody who is not in a movement and watches Washington and says why are these guys getting all this money, why do they go become so rich, why do they have these advantages?”Why indeed? Granted, Abramoff’s in the middle of his promotion tour of confession and attempted redemption, a pot obscenely eager to call his kettle and former mentor black — especially if it sells books. But Casino Jack does have a point.Gingrich personifies everything rotten about the ATM machine we call Washington: the merchandising of favors and votes; the conversion of past incumbency into insider information, making your contacts and the ability to play the system available to the highest bidder; the archetypal revolving door between government service and shilling for corporate America.Yet there he is, suddenly riding at the top of the polls, his debate skills lauded, his churlish dismissal of the media praised, and infused with sufficient cheek to portray himself to gullible elements of the electorate as an outsider. It’s as if Kim Kardashian proclaimed herself American Housewife of the Year.(Gingrich now is trying to play the inside-outside game both ways, proclaiming last week, “We just tried four years of amateur ignorance and it didn’t work very well. So having someone who actually knows Washington might be a really good thing.”)

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