Lobbying To Be President
For sheer hypocrisy, it’s becoming harder and harder to top Newt Gingrich. Concerning the man who blasts lobbyists as a scourge on responsible politics, we get this from The Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney:
First of all, we know that Gingrich has been paid by drug companies and by the drug lobby, notably during the Medicare drug debate. … So we know he was paid consultant for drug makers. That’s the first criterion for being a drug lobbyist.
Here’s the second criterion: While some consultants simply provide strategy or advice, Gingrich directly contacted lawmakers in an effort to win their votes.
Three former Republican congressional staffers told me that Gingrich was calling around Capitol Hill and visiting Republican congressmen in 2003 in an effort to convince conservatives to support a bill expanding Medicare to include prescription-drug subsidies …
Conservatives were worried about the potential for cost overruns, and about the credibility of their limited-government arguments if they passed this new entitlement bill. “Every concern that members raised,” the former House staffer told me, “Gingrich would respond with a poll number.” Gingrich invoked the American Express motto “Don’t Leave Home Without It,” and told Republicans they could not afford to go home for recess without some Medicare drug bill — regardless of the content.
Two aides to other GOP members who had been resisting the bill told me their bosses were lobbied by Gingrich over the phone, sometimes citing politics, sometimes citing substance. And it worked. “Newt Gingrich moved votes on the prescription-drug bill,” one conservative staffer told me. “That’s for sure.”
So citizen Gingrich pushes for a massive expansion of government, as long as it lines his own pockets with some loot, while candidate Gingrich comes down hard on big government and politics as usual?
A politician talking out of both sides of his mouth? Now there’s a shocker.
And it gets worse, as Carney draws the obvious comparison to Obama and his slick interpretation of what should and shouldn’t be considered a lobbyist, playing both sides against the middle:
So Gingrich can be considered a non-lobbyist only by the same narrow definition of “lobbyist” President Obama uses: someone registered with the House and Senate under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. This is how Obama can claim to reject lobbyist contributions while taking money from vice presidents of government affairs and the like.
That’s not to compare the nut of governing political philosophies between Gingrich and Obama, but it does present some troubling parallels between the core moral standards and structures that seem to guide the pair.
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