Fox News: ‘Bitter’ Newt Gingrich trolling for CNN gig

The feud between Fox News and Newt Gingrich has become a very real, two-sided affair.

On Wednesday, Gingrich told a group of tea party leaders in Delaware – it was unclear whether he thought the meeting was private, but a reporter was present – that he considered Fox News in the pocket of Mitt Romney.

“In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year,” Gingrich said.

On Thursday, Fox retaliated with an unusually personal attack on a personality that, until last year, it was paying for his on-air analysis. From The Guardian in London:

”This is nothing other than Newt auditioning for a windfall of a gig at CNN – that’s the kind of man he is. Not to mention that he’s still bitter about the fact that we terminated his contributor contract.”

Politico.com takes note today of an extreme measure to which Gingrich has resorted in order to keep his presidential campaign afloat:

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….

Renting the donor list costs $135-per-thousand-names (more if you want to target specific donor levels or geographic areas), while the activist list can be rented for $50-per-thousand email addresses. That means that each time the full lists are rented, the Gingrich campaign could make between $19,000 and $26,000…

But it also likely means that Gingrich’s list will become less valuable to his campaign as a fundraising tool, since his donors could be weighing solicitations from multiple conservative groups.

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Likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney will give a speech to the National Rifle Association, while President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden each plan to release their income tax returns today – while challenging Romney to do the same.

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A watchdog group in Washington has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, illegally concealed the source of loans to his campaign. From Blake Aued and the Athens Banner-Herald:

The Athens Republican loaned his campaign, the Paul Broun Committee, $304,000 in 2007 and 2008. The committee has paid him $29,756 in interest on the loans, according to FEC records.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which a released a report last month detailing questionable campaign and office spending by more than 200 congressmen, filed the FEC complaint after Broun told the Banner-Herald the loans came from a bank, and he used the interest payments from his campaign to pay the bank’s interest.

Broun’s campaign said in FEC filings that the loans came from the congressman’s own pocket. If the money did come from bank loans, he broke the law by not reporting the bank’s name and what he used as collateral, according to CREW.

The group is also wondering whether the loan came from a Carrollton bank that Broun partially owned – and failed in 2010.

The charges are particularly relevant, given that Broun has primary opposition from Stephen Simpson, a retired Army lieutenant colonel from Milledgeville.

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The Gwinnett Daily Post is reporting that NFL quarterback Tim Tebow has delayed the date of his visit to a suburban Atlanta church to May 4. The 2007 Heisman Trophy winner – recently traded to the New York Jets – will appear at 12Stone Church in Lawrenceville with author John C. Maxwell.

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Headed for the summer’s political conventions in Tampa or Charlotte, and afraid your cowbell will be confiscated at the door? There’s an app for that, of course.

Cowbell 2012 – yes, there’s a website to go with it – is a noisemaker app that will include a news feed based on the user’s political preference, whether Democrat, Republican or tea party.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

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