More Scrutiny for Newt

In this morning's Washington Post, Dana Milbank thinks that Newt Gingrich's record contains too much in the way of moderation for his to fulfill the desires of conservatives for an alternative to Mitt Romney. I am not sure I buy that, although Milbank assembles a fair amount of evidence to support his argument.

But, the bigger problem for Gingrich was in the news section where it was reported that he was paid some $1.6 million dollars by Freddie Mac, the quasi-private government backer of mortgage loans. Unwilling to blame the lapses of the market for the economic downturn, Republicans have tried to make Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae the whipping boys.

This is bad enough on its face, but it will be hard to avoid the charge of being a gracy-train-seeking hypocrite, when confronted with his own words, published in 2010, when he wrote that Freddie and Fannie "are so thoroughly politicized and preside over such irresponsible lending policies that they need to be replaced with smaller, private companies operating without government guarantees, whose leaders focus on making a profit, not manipulating politicians." Forget about "irresponsible lending policies." How about irresponsible hiring of overpaid consultants policies!