Even Newt Gets It

Even Newt Gingrich understands and admits that the Administration's proposed bailout of Wall Street is a non-starter:

This $700 billion bailout plan, this potential 20-year mess that you're
talking about, comes from a Republican administration, comes from your own party. What's happened to Republican faith in small government and free markets?

Well, I think you have a Goldman Sachs chief of staff to the president and the Goldman Sachs secretary of the Treasury. And they convinced the president that the American people ought to send $700 billion to Wall Street, which I think is a very, very bad idea, and I would argue is a very un-Republican idea. I don't understand what they think they're doing.

Do you feel betrayed by the Bush administration and by the
president?

Well, betrayed is too strong a word. I think what they're doing is just wrong. And I think that it's likely to fail, and it's likely to make the situation worse over time. And I think that [U.S. Treasury] Secretary [Henry] Paulson has shown almost no understanding of how a democracy operates. His initial draft would have given him $700 billion of your tax money with no oversight, no judicial review, no accountability. I mean, we're not a dictatorship.

He also makes the point that Chris Dodd--whom I supported while he was in the Presidential race--may have a conflict of interest because of the all the money he received from the banking industry. I don't think Dodd is a crook but I also don't think he is the best person to be leading the charge to find a "solution" to this financial meltdown.