A month and a half ago, we learned that in contrast to what usually happens to a not-entirely-unsuccesful presidential contender, the candidacy of one Newton Leroy Gingrich had seriously hampered the former Speaker's ability to get people to give him money for doing very little other than spout off his opinion on things. You see, Newt had carefully constructed a network of organizations whose main purpose was getting people to give him money for being Newt. In the course of the campaign, however, the world learned just how much people gave him, and how little they got for it, most notably in the case of Freddie Mac, which paid Newt $1.6 million for "strategic consulting" that consisted of little more than giving a couple of speeches and having a couple of meetings. It'll now be awfully hard for Newt to run that scam on anyone again, and as a result, GloboNewtCorp is well and truly disintegrating. The Center for Health Transformation, one arm of GloboNewtCorp, went bankrupt, and the other tendrils of the network are falling away like dust through Newt's stubby fingers. Here are some excerpts from a Reuters article on the proceedings:
The Gingrich Group bankruptcy proceedings spotlight the remarkable reversal of fortune of the half-dozen organizations associated with Gingrich. The presidential contender recently ended his campaign $4.8 million in debt. A political nonprofit he headed, American Solutions for Winning the Future, which raised $52 million between its founding in 2007 and its dissolution last July, also ended in debt....
Desmond said revenues [for the CHT] fell from just under $7 million in 2010 to $4 million in 2011 and then to less than $300,000 in the first quarter of this year. Some $1.2 million in dues that had been expected earlier this year never materialized because those members also decided not to renew. By March the center was no longer able to pay the rent on its suite of offices in Atlanta and Washington.
In April it declared bankruptcy, leaving almost $600,000 in debts to outside vendors, half of it to Chain Bridge Bank, a boutique lending institution in McLean, Virginia, headed by former Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois. The company also owes the $6.4 million to Gingrich and his wife, Callista, neither of whom could be reached for comment...
In a financial disclosure report filed last July in connection with his presidential campaign, Gingrich's net worth was between $6.7 million and $30.1 million. By far his largest asset was the promissory note, which he valued at between $5 million and $25 million, selecting from the broad ranges provided on the disclosure form.
From the looks of things, Newt is going to get none of that money. I'm sure he can get an office and an assistant as a "senior fellow" at someplace like the American Enterprise Institute. But for a world-historical figure of Newt's stature, whose place in humankind's evolution is rivalled only by figures like Martin Luther or Winston Churchill, that's a long way to fall. And I'll bet Tiffany's won't be extending the Gingriches any more lines of credit. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for the guy. But then you remember just how much poison Newt has injected into the American body politic over the last few decades, and you get over it.
