I respectfully disagree.
Former politicians who do ‘consulting’ work often are selling their influence.
My concern is that when they sell this influence to a quazi-government agency (like Freddie and Fannie) it is not for services but to buy silence. It is not like they were buying paper clips (or other tangible assets that you can physically touch) but they were buying ‘consulting.’ And by Newt’s admission, they didn’t even follow his advise so they essentially paid him $3.6 million for nothing.
When Bush tried to increase regulation on Freddie and Fannie, the Dems unanimously blocked the reform. Repubs let it die.
Where was Newt? Was he pushing reform or sitting on the sidelines? If he was on the sidelines, they got their 3.6 million dollars worth.
But it’s not Newt’s job to be a crusader against Freddie and Fannie when he’s out of office. You’re of course free to vote for someone who devoted their free time to crusading for causes that are important to you. It’s a pretty high bar to set to say that you’ll only vote for someone who anticipated a crisis that almost no one anticipated, particularly at the magnitude that it occurred.
It’s true that the President and some Republicans made a minor effort trying to reform Freddie and Fannie that went nowhere. But even they have said they never anticipated the magnitude of the crisis.
Newt said he believed in what Freddie and Fannie were doing. Most politicians did for decades. Newt didn’t try to shut them down when he was in the House either, which is when he had a lot more power to do so. So why is he being criticized for working with them in the private sector but not for supporting them while in the House? The answer: it’s an attack based on class warfare and the emotional effect of shouting about someone making millions of dollars. I think that’s what Newt was going for when he shot back at Romney about Bain Capital. He was trying to say that attacking Newt for the money he made is no more legitimate than attacking Romney for what he made.
Bottom line is I fail to see how Newt can be held more responsible for not shutting down Freddie and Fannie in the 2000s than any of the politicians who were in office at that time and did not make a concerted effort to do the same.
My point is a simple one.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
That is life in the beltway. I sell my “Knowledge” as well. Sure not quite the paycheck that Newt could draw but that is irrelevant. The Number shouldn’t matter.
Your concern is that he sold influence, and if that was the commodity he was selling than that is what they paid for. It’s a private market. We do the same in business, we pay large dollars for sales people who bring influence. After all, a sales person sells products by relationships, similar to how Congress works on relationships.
My point comes back to this.
I want to know what he advocated for, was he anti-conservative values? What he or his firm was paid is irrelevant to me, as that was a private contract.