The Accomplishments of Newt Gingrich

Here is an exhaustive list of Newt Gingrich's accomplishments:

?

Thank you.

I'm going to fundamentally, extraordinarily, surprisingly, change (what was I talking about?)

I suppose we owe him more than that. So here goes:

Newt Gingrich did obtain a PhD in History from Tulane University. He became an assistant professor of history at West Georgia College in 1970. He switched to the geography department in 1974. After being refused tenure, he left the college in 1978.

He lost two runs for the House but won on the third attempt in 1978. He won a number of terms in the House until he quit in 1998 after the election loss. He has served in government only in the House.

He was elected Minority Whip in 1989 and the Speaker of the House in 1995.

He was a co-author of the Contract with America, though most of the ideas came from the Heritage Foundation and he was not the lead author. Few of the ideas in the Contract made it into law. One, welfare reform, was enacted in cooperation with President Bill Clinton.

Gingrich, as Speaker of the House, led House actions that caused two government shutdowns during the Clinton years, leading to a diminished Republican Party, which lost the House in 1998.

He was charged with 84 ethics violations, some of which he admitted in 1997, which led to a $300,000 fine.

After the ethics investigations and the loss of Republican control of the House and Senate, after four years in power -- and a botched challenge to his leadership -- he resigned both his Speakership and his House seat.

In the next thirteen years, he made an estimated $100 million NOT LOBBYING Congress.

Part of that time he spent with his Center for Health Transformation. He was against Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care reform and Obama's health care reform, the only significant reforms enacted since his Center was founded. He did not lead any action that led to any health care reform.

Newt's all right. He was born that way.

Okay, now, what did he do? What did he accomplish? Mind you, Lady Gaga had three platinum records in the past three years, with total sales, between albums and singles, in excess of 40,000,000 units. Now, I like Lady Gaga well enough, but that's not the point. This is what she's done since 2008, during the Great Recession. And she's 26, and it appears that she's driven most of her own success.

Now, what has Gingrich done, again?

Shut the government down twice (didn't work) and limited poor people's access to government money through welfare reform. And got denied tenure. And DIDN'T LOBBY (while making $100 million doing nothing). And got hounded out of Congress for ethics violations and, well, sucking at leadership. And created a Center for Health Transformation that has contributed, ah, ????

Oh, I forgot his major accomplishment to date: managed to become the leading candidate for the GOP nomination for president in 2012.

To quote Steve Jobs' last words: wow wow wow