Free Republic

POLITICO's Ginger Gibson reports: Newt Gingrich still won't congratulate Mitt Romney for winning the Iowa caucuses. At a news conference in Concord, N.H., Gingrich was asked by CBS correspondent Dean Reynolds why he congratulated Rick Santorum but not Romney. Gingrich stared at the reporter and raised his eyebrows in silence, eventually drawing laughter from some of the reporters. "Because I know you would be a man of great professionalism, I know that's a rhetorical question. And a good one," Gingrich said. During his speech in Des Moines last night, Gingrich visibly seethed at mention of Romney, who along with his...

This, from Bloomberg News, is the kind of scrutiny that you draw when you start getting taken seriously as a presidential candidate: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said during a Nov. 9 debate that he earned a $300,000 fee to advise Freddie Mac as a “historian” who warned that the mortgage company’s business model was “insane.” Former Freddie Mac officials familiar with the consulting work Gingrich was hired to perform for the company in 2006 tell a different story. They say the former House speaker was asked to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf...

One of the key economists who helped presidential candidate Herman Cain draft his 9-9-9 tax plan is backing away from the most controversial component of it, warning that the criticism Cain endured at Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate shows his proposed 9 percent national sales tax might have to go. "It was such a dart board," economist Stephen Moore said Wednesday of the proposal. Cain weathered a storm of complaints over his tax plan at the Republican debate in Las Vegas. Virtually every candidate took turns accusing the businessman of pushing a scheme that would introduce new streams of revenue...