Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501230061
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
``They will do anything to stop us. They will use any tool. There is no grotesquery, no distortion, no dishonesty too great for them to come after us ...
``This city is going to be a mean, tough, hard city,'' the Georgia Republican told the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee.
He said he is a target of unfair personal attacks because he threatens the Washington status quo, first by challenging the ethics of other members of Congress and now as the leader of a conservative revolution aiming to dismantle the capital bureaucracy.
``I am a genuine revolutionary,'' he said. ``They are the genuine reactionaries. We are going to change their world.''
His remarks drew thunderous applause and yelps of joy from a room full of Republicans who feel they owe him for delivering them to the promised land of majority control in Congress after a 40-year exile.
When he walked into the room, 50 minutes late, flashbulbs popped and people crowded into the aisles to be near him. His cause is their cause, his enemies their enemies.
Just days after first lady Hillary Clinton hosted Gingrich and his mother on a personal tour of the White House, Gingrich used questions about the first lady's $100,000 profit from a $1,000 cattle investment to contrast his decision to abandon a controversial $4.5 million book advance.
``I know there are important Democrats in this city who would have automatically turned down $4.5 million,'' he said sarcastically. ``They'd have said, `I can make too much money in cattle futures.'''
The reference to her profits sparked yells of support and a standing ovation.
He turned his sights on the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who said earlier Friday that Gingrich ``would not have given up the $4.5 million deal, had it not been exposed.''
Why, Gingrich asked, does Dodd question only the Republican speaker's ethics, while ignoring ethical questions facing top Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and former Deputy Attorney General Webster Hubbell.
``You have many ethics opportunities,'' Gingrich said.
He cast himself as a bipartisan and often lone voice for ethics in Washington - who has questioned the ethics of Republicans as well as Democrats - and suggested he is now the target of retribution.
One of those agents of revenge, he said, is Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., among Gingrich's most outspoken critics. In 1990, Gingrich moved, unsuccessfully, to have Frank censured by the House for hiring a male prostitute. Frank ultimately was reprimanded, a lesser House punishment.
``Barney Frank hates me,'' he said.
``When I see him in a newspaper talking about me being intellectually dishonest, I am sickened by a press corps that would report it.''
And he noted how, when he filed ethics charges against former Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, Wright's top aide filed 10 ethics charges against Gingrich and his wife. They had to spend $145,000 to defend themselves, he said.
In the end, Wright resigned in disgrace.
``Jim Wright was a crook,'' he said, though Wright was never charged with or convicted of a crime.
The only charge substantiated against Gingrich, he said, was the relatively minor one that he failed to disclose that he had co-signed a loan for his sister.
``Every single charge was a lie,'' he said.
To deal with one of the current ethics complaints, about contributions to a college course Gingrich teaches, 10 holdover members of the House Ethics Committee were named Friday to investigate. Gingrich helped work out the arrangement in an effort to avoid a conflict of interest.
The conflict problem is related to the complaint by former Democratic Rep. Ben Jones, the Georgian defeated by Gingrich in the November election. Jones said improper tax deductible donations were used to finance a politically oriented college course taught by Gingrich at a private Georgia college. The contributions went to a nonprofit foundation that, according to Jones, has strong ties to Gingrich's conservative political action committee.
The committee will consist of five Republicans and five Democrats, all of them members of the Ethics Committee in the last Congress. It also may end up investigating Gingrich's book deal with a publishing firm owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch.
However, there could be conflict questions involving two Republican appointees - Reps. Porter Goss of Florida and Jim Bunning of Kentucky - who either donated to or accepted contributions from the PAC.
The Associated Press contributed information to this story.
by CNB