A day late, Newt delivers good government message

by: Juan Melli

Wed Apr 02, 2008 at 02:04:47 PM EDT

"This is a state which if you look at the cost of bad government and bad culture ... the potential is there for a reform movement," said Gingrich [...]

Gingrich, after all, was the architect of the so-called K Street Project, which is at the center of the current corruption scandals. As the Post reported in 2002, "Starting in the mid-1990s, some Republicans, including then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and [Representative Tom] DeLay, have advocated tracking the political affiliation of lobbyists, as part of an effort to place more conservatives on K Street." In return, K Street would help the GOP ram through corporate-written legislation and fill GOP coffers with campaign contributions. It worked perfectly. The American Prospect reported in 2000 that within the first six months of Gingrich's tenure as Speaker, "the Republican leadership introduced a spate of controversial bills gutting regulatory agencies" and that "business contributions more than doubled from what they had been during a comparable period in 1993."