Word: gingriched
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Democrats are only too happy to have the Gingrich affair. It puts into a favorable perspective the serious trouble they know is coming over Democratic fund raising and other scandals attaching to Bill Clinton. If the White House is in for a rough ride, and it is, so much the better for Democrats if the best-known Republican leader is damaged goods, producing more damaged goods in a ring all around him. How damaged? That's what January will be all about...
Until just before the New Year, Gingrich thought he could tiptoe past the political graveyard. On Dec. 21 the House ethics committee released a 22-page report based on evidence assembled by James Cole, its special investigator. Most of its findings concerned whether the nationally broadcast college course that Gingrich taught, which was financed by tax-deductible contributions to nonprofit organizations, had partisan purposes. The subcommittee concluded that it had. Most damningly, the panel determined that Gingrich had misled committee investigators by signing false statements declaring that his political organization, GOPAC, had no involvement with the course...
...questions are intricate, a matter of subclause (a) filtering into subclause (b). But whether Gingrich had partisan purposes for his college course, then denied it to the ethics committee, is less murky, at least on the basis of the committee's report. It offers a full record of instances in which Gingrich declared that his purpose was to raise up a generation of G.O.P. activists. Against those, his bland assurances in at least two letters to the investigating committee that the course was "completely nonpartisan" ring hollow...
...same day the committee offered its report, Gingrich issued a letter. Though he denied any intent to mislead the members, he admitted that "inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable statements were given to the committee" over his signature. He claimed to be "naive" about the tax laws. All of that gave him reasonable hope of getting away with just a reprimand, the lightest penalty, from the committee. While even that would be unprecedented for a House Speaker, it would fall short of censure, which would require Gingrich to step down...
Both the report and Gingrich's letter of admission were issued on the Saturday before Christmas, when most Americans were more caught up in shopping than in the weekend papers. In the end, however, too much was at stake for Gingrich's fate to be an easy call. Too many G.O.P. House members had fresh memories of how his unpopularity complicated their re-election campaigns last November. They were in no mood to be asked to put their reputations at further risk by giving him their unqualified support...