Desperate times in the Newt Gingrich camp have called for desperate measures. Scrambling to dig himself out of a $4.5 million hole, the former House speaker has resorted to renting his presidential campaign’s most valuable asset – its donor list – for as much as $26,000-a-pop.

If you ever had any doubt about Newt Gingrich's talent for grift, doubt no more: The initial thrust of the linked article is the political risk involved in diluting the donor list of a campaign that's still technically active.

But I just wanted to point out that a while back, the Gingrich campaign was paying Gingrich himself, to rent his donor list.

Funny, too, that Gingrich, who's famously insisted that his "campaign" make stops at his personal bucket list of zoos and museums along the way, has according to his spokesman, loaned the campaign "thousands, primarily toward travel and lodging expenses.” But you'll all be relieved to know that “the campaign intends to reimburse" the loans.

Whew! And here I thought Newt was going to have to pay the expenses of his personal travel and private jet rental himself! Thank God his broke-ass campaign is going to do it! By renting out the list it paid him to buy.

You see how that works? Gingrich spends years running variations on his "Entrepreneur of the Year" scheme, then sets up a "presidential campaign" whose job it is to raise money to buy the product of the previous schemes.

Nice!

Actually, Politico's lengthy piece does a respectable job of taking you down all the side streets and seamy alleyways of Newt, Inc. I recommend it, and not just for salacious nuggets like this one:



Campaign insiders attribute the problems partly to Gingrich and his wife Callista’s, asserting that the couple was unwilling to downgrade from private jets and security details even as the campaign floundered. Insiders say Callista Gingrich required an entourage of at least two staffers – including one who dressed in an elephant costume to promote her children’s book – and a contracted security guard who followed her even on non-campaign trips.

Not that I could resist including it, of course.

As an added bonus, though, let me include this link, for yet another deep dive into the Gingrich grift legacy: Newt Gingrich Leaves 30-Year Trail Of Debts, Lawsuits And Bankruptcies In His Wake

Seriously. If you learn the history (and what "historian" would discourage you from doing that?), you'll see there's no "teetering" here. Gingrich took a flying leap off the laughingstock cliff years ago. If I had to pin it down, I'd say it dates from, oh, let's say, the time he was forced from the nation's third highest Constitutional office under a cloud of... well, pretty much exactly this same thing.

Keep puttin' him on the Sunday shows, though! It's workin' out great!