Word: speakered
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...against Gingrich. In the main, he's accused of improperly taking tax-deductible contributions made to various nonprofit foundations and funneling them into party-building activities for the G.O.P., then misleading the ethics committee when it investigated those dealings. So when it came time to decide his fitness as Speaker, it might have been better if House members had been spared any hints that their future withdrawals from the G.O.P. campaign-finance account might depend on how they voted. Niceties like that are what ethics are all about. But expediency is what politics is often about...
...starting last Monday when New York Representative Michael Forbes, a longtime Gingrich supporter, released himself into the atmosphere. Charging that Gingrich's effectiveness had been fatally undermined, Forbes became the first G.O.P. House member to call publicly for him to hand over his gavel. "He'll be a Speaker who's weighed down," Forbes said. He claimed that two dozen or so other House Republicans were thinking the same way. If just 20 Republicans held back their votes, Gingrich would be finished. Prominent conservatives like columnist William Safire and Judge Robert Bork were glumly suggesting that Gingrich would be doing...
...range of evidence against him. In their letter they announced their intention to vote for Gingrich and said they knew of "no reason now, nor do we foresee any in the normal course of events in the future, why Newt Gingrich would be ineligible to serve as Speaker...
...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...
That became a distinct possibility last Tuesday, when the ethics committee announced that it would not begin the final phase of its investigation of Gingrich until Jan. 8, one day after the scheduled vote to re-elect the Speaker. Its schedule meant House members would have to decide on Gingrich without knowing what punishment the committee would recommend. Meanwhile, there was a prospect of more embarrassing disclosures later this month when Cole, the special investigator hired by the committee, will lay out his case...