From the RINO establishment: “It is time now for all of us to put aside our differences and unite behind the candidate the voters have chosen as the clear frontrunner.” Also: “This spurious and vicious attack by a desperate loser is unconscionable, strikes at the heart of American values, and plays into the hands of the Left by handing them an issue to bludgeon the GOP nominee with, one that is based not on fact but on smear, innuendo, and outright falsehood.”
But hey, it’s okay when Mittens does it, eh, RINOs?
In an exclusive with Larry O’Connor earlier today, Governor John H. Sununu called on Newt Gingrich to release the records pertaining to a 1990s congressional ethics investigation, in a move to defray attention to Romney’s decision not to release his taxes.
The ethics report on Newt Gingrich is publicly available, but has been construed as politically motivated. The alleged violations concerned a course that Gingrich taught at Kennesaw State College while serving in Congress. The course’s promoters received financial support from “individuals, corporations and foundations,” promising that the project qualified for tax-exempt status. The ethics committee ultimately concluded that the course was “actually a coordinated effort” to “help in achieving a partisan, political goal” — something that would run afoul of its tax-exempt status.
And yet, when the IRS looked into those accusations in a three-year investigation, it found that the donations to Gingrich’s charity were “consistent with its stated exempt purposes,” and Gingrich’s course and course book “were educational in content,” according to The Washington Post in 1999. By then, Gingrich had left office, preferring retirement to a fight over leadership.
Gingrich adamantly denied violating the law, but ultimately agreed to pay a $300,000 fine for making misleading statements to the ethics committee.
It appears that Gingrich was fined, mostly for political cover to the Republicans. The IRS declared that Gingrich’s course ”was educational and never favored or opposed a candidate for public office.”
Still it’s curious as to why Romney’s surrogates are making this an issue, and why Governor John Sununu, especially, is making a big deal of it.
Not really. Romney is an oily bastard who will do absolutely anything to get nominated for the office he’s spent so many years lusting after and unsuccessfully running for, that’s all. Watch for this perennial loser to get even dirtier, using any ammunition he can have his well-paid minions grub up, now that he’s back on track to fall short yet again.
(Via Ross)
Update! Jacobson says it: “Mitt Romney sides with Nancy Pelosi.” And then there’s this:
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.”
And now Romney’s trying to use it in the throes of his desperation. That article is from 1999, and Bozell is still waiting for a correction. He’ll never get it, any more than we’ll ever see any proper contrition from the Mittbots–who whined so piteously over Gingrich’s supposed “attack on capitalism”–over their boy’s adoption of Lefty smear tactics in his unswerving quest for the office he so greedily covets.
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