KEITH OLBERMANN: With the shelf life of the average Republican presidential front-runner down to about three weeks and change now, Newt Gingrich may have already peaked.
The fifth story on the "Countdown" — another former speaker — now Minority Leader — Nancy Pelosi, is implying to TPM's Brian Beutler that she has a thousand pages of "stuff" on Gingrich. Besides the House Ethics reprimand and the House $300,000 fine and his adultery while he was persecuting Bill Clinton for adultery and serving the divorce papers on the missus while she was undergoing chemo and his lobbying for Freddie Mac and everything else? Besides that?
Former Speaker Pelosi telling Beutler, who joins us in a moment, "One of these days we'll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him — four of us locked in a room, in an undisclosed location, for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff."
After meeting with Donald Trump today, Gingrich called Pelosi's comments an early Christmas present. He added this:
(Excerpt from video clip) GINGRICH: If she's suggesting she is going to use material that she developed while she was on the Ethics Committee, that is a fundamental violation of the rules of House and I would hope that members would immediately file charges against her the second she does it.
OLBERMANN: Do you want to slip him the note that he's not in the House anymore? That probably won't be necessary. A Pelosi spokesman has told The Hill tonight, the former speaker was, "clearly referring to the extensive amount of information that is in the public record," which does not mean many Democrats would not be delighted to see Gingrich win the nomination anyway.Such as the Massachusetts congressman, Barney Frank.
(Excerpt from video clip) BARNEY FRANK: He would be a very weak candidate. He would lose heavily and a lot of Democrats would win races in which there would be a great fall-off.
OLBERMANN: He, of course, may not get that close, once more Republicans go back and see his 2007 ad about climate change, featuring Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi.
(Excerpt from video clip) NANCY PELOSI: We don't always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?
(Excerpt from video clip) GINGRICH: No, but we do agree — our country must take action to address climate change.
OLBERMANN: They don't agree on that anymore or anything else. Gingrich told the Huckabee Presidential Forum on Saturday.
(Excerpt from video clip) GINGRICH: Publicly, sitting on the couch with Nancy Pelosi is the dumbest single thing I've done in the last few years.
OLBERMANN: Maybe not. And that was before Gingrich said what he said to a CBS reporter before the Kennedy Center Honors last night.
Despite all of the disappointments — and I know how he feels — GOP voters telling the latest Gallup poll that Gingrich is an acceptable presidential nominee. At 62%, he's eight points more acceptable than Mitt Romney and 21 points better than Texas Governor Rick Perry. And, of course, we have to asterisk those — which is that those numbers looked just as good for Herman Cain at one point and Rick Perry at another. All of the candidates, of course, now hoping to get a boost from Cain's voters. Mr. Cain announcing an end to his campaign Saturday:
(Excerpt from video clip) HERMAN CAIN: I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt, caused on me and my family. Not because we are not fighters. Not because I'm not a fighter.
OLBERMANN: As the old cliché goes — he's not a fighter, he's a lover. Meantime, Congressman Ron Paul — who's not facing any ethics claims we know of, past or present — continues to move up in the Republican polls.
The latest Des Moines Register Poll putting Newt Gingrich in the lead there, with 25%. But Congressman Paul is now in second, in that state's Caucus voters, at 18% and Mitt Romney is still in third place, at 16%. Will Cain's voters help Paul close that gap? Paul thinks perhaps:
(Excerpt from video clip) RON PAUL: Obviously, they're going to go somewhere in the next week or so, that's going to happen. So, I'm optimistic that we'll pick up some votes from there.
OLBERMANN: Newt and La Donald — later. First, back to Newt and Nancy. And I'm joined, as promised, by Talking Points Memo senior congressional correspondent, Brian Beutler. Brian, thanks for your time tonight.
BRIAN BEUTLER: Thanks for having me back, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Well, there's has been a lot of coverage of that story that you did today. Nancy saying that she knows a lot about Newt Gingrich. Are we assuming she knows stuff that the rest of us don't, and they had to put that little caveat on there to tamp it down? Or what do you — what do we think has happened since you put your story out today?
BEUTLER: I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. I don't think that she was alluding — in her interview with me — that she was going to, you know, leak confidential information.
OLBERMANN: Um-hmm.
BEUTLER: To reporters but that — but that she's a student, in essence, of Newt Gingrich. She served with him for years as a senior Democrat, when he was Speaker and on the Ethics committee that investigated him in the '90s, so — so she's — she's more familiar with him than— than just about any senior Democrat in Washington, let alone, you know, a twentysomething or thirtysomething opposition researcher for a campaign, so, she — she's been through the thousands of pages of publicly-available Ethics committee documents and she remembers the goodies. So, they're there. She just happens to know them better than most people.
OLBERMANN: So, your impression, in talking — talking to her about this was that it was more along the lines of the way Barney Frank's — Barney Frank has repeatedly and enthusiastically discussed the possibility of a Gingrich nomination, as in saying he didn't think he'd led a good enough life to have lived to see a Newt Gingrich nomination?
BEUTLER: I think that's and right and, you know, one of the things Pelosi said in our interview was — I mean, one of the things she did in our interview — was to quote Barney Frank, who said, you know, "I never thought I'd be — live so lucky a life as to see Newt Gingrich be nominated to run for — for the president as a Republican."
And I think that that's — I think that's what she meant — just, like, I — I will — "in case any of you guys have forgotten about all of the stuff that went on, because there was so much of it, there — there are a lot of good pearls still — still buried in there."
OLBERMANN: But — but, I thought Gingrich's response to this was fascinating in it — in almost — it was almost more serious than what — what the minority leader said, in the tone she used, because he — I mean, he — whatever the bait was or — even if it wasn't bait but it — something that appeared in the water — he rose to it and — and used — he took out that holier-than-thou attitude that he used to use when he was Speaker and the — we heard the clip, there, telling Pelosi that if she used the material from the 1999 ethics investigation, she would be in "fundamental violation of the rules of the House." Are we to also infer from this that he suspects that there might be more in that House record than in the public record?
BEUTLER: Yeah. I think that that was the — unintentionally revealing part of what he said. You know, I think the flip side of that is that his, sort of, combative attitude towards Pelosi and Democrats, who — who, you know, are hinting that he'd be a terrible — terrible nominee and that there's just too much dirt on him for him to be viable — the fact that he's willing to, sort of, take them on in the press appeals to a lot of GOP base voters, so they may miss that, sort of, — you know, what you — what you just alluded to — that hint, that she might actually have some goodies that she can — that nobody else has ever seen, that she could in, you know, in theory draw upon. They may have missed that and — and just, you know, respect the fact that he's — he's out there, you know, fighting back and taking Pelosi head on.
OLBERMANN: But just — just limiting it to what we know on — on the record, Gingrich still was insisting that the House Ethics committee acted — the word he used was "capriciously" — against him and the process was tainted. I mean, we're talking about — as The Washington Post had reported — the GOP House voted 395-28 to reprimand him and to fine him this unprecedented amount of $300,000 and — and he admitted at the time that he broke House rules and violated federal tax laws on two different projects and he gave false information to the Ethics committee. So exactly — exactly what was the capriciousness and — how was the process tainted and — that line that was once used about the Murdoch people — does Newt know that we can see him?
BEUTLER: I think — a colleague of mine on Twitter made a joke the other day, or made an observation the other day, that Newt Gingrich is running the sort of candidacy that you might — you might've been able to get away with running before reporters had, you know, handheld devices that gave them instant access to Google.
He — you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you might be able to say that and it would be three days and much confusion later before there was any fact checking of it and it'd be water under the bridge. Now, he says that and the — you know, that Washington Post article is right there. And — and, you know, so are — so are dozens of Republican members of the House, still around or former members of the House who can say why they voted to — to reprimand him. So, you know, it's punchy of him to say that but he's — he's not going to be able to get away with that for very long.
OLBERMANN: And, of course, you're leaving out what you've already encountered today — which is the considerable and underrated memory and political acumen of Nancy Pelosi.
Brian Beutler, senior congressional correspondent for Talking Points Memo. Good work on that story and again, great thanks for sharing some of it with us tonight.
BEUTLER: Thanks so much, Keith.
