Blast from the past: Romney uses vintage video to hit Gingrich (charges Newt was cleared of)

Since Friday morning, the Romney campaign has been beaming an unusual 30-second spot into media markets across the state of Florida. It consists almost exclusively of a vintage video clip from Jan. 21, 1997, the day Newt Gingrich was sanctioned by his House colleagues after an ethics investigation.

What makes the ad striking is the content: NBC Nightly News anchor (at the time) Tom Brokaw, is introducing his network's report that evening on Newt's downfall earlier in the day. That's all there is, and the video bite is perfectly sized for a political ad.

The Romney researcher who discovered the clip must have done handsprings to discover the bonus at the end: Brokaw's kicker--raising questions about Gingrich's "future effectiveness"--seems eerily prescient, even viewed 15 years later.

Romney and his super PAC compadres have been whacking Gingrich for weeks over the ethics violations, part of a broader assault on their main opponent's character.

Now, they are adding Brokaw's considerable credibility to their case--as a character witness to counter anyone who may have been swayed by Gingrich's recent efforts to play down the significance of the event, which paved the way for his downfall as House speaker.

By airing what is, in effect, a mini-documentary, (the campaign calls the ad, "History Lesson."), the Romney camp is delivering a powerful punch at a key moment in the GOP race.

I agree completely. Newt needs to educate the public on his past rather than spend so much valuable time in defense mode. I hope and pray that he can overcome the Romney machine and the liberal media, dims and GOP establishment’s lies, slander and innuendo. Newt all the way to the White House!

If you're on any news sites mentioning the "ethics violation," here's a bite I put together from Byron York's article which you can paste in the comments, since all of the MSM articles seem to fail to mention Newt was later exonerated...

Here are the facts quoted from "What really happened in the Gingrich ethics case?" by Byron York in the Washington Examiner: Stunned by their loss of control of the House -- a loss engineered by Gingrich -- House Democrats began pushing a variety of ethics complaints against the new Speaker...It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter....the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. Gingrich was exonerated. The bottom line: Gingrich acted properly and violated no laws. But if Gingrich is to have any hope of climbing out from under the allegations, he'll have to find some way of letting people know what really happened.

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