When Newt Gingrich was asked in the November 9 CNBC presidential debate what he did to earn $300,000 from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, Gingrich claimed: "I said to them at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible." But the Wall Street Journal reported December 1 that Gingrich had not only praised the Freddie Mac model in a 2007 interview on the mortgage giant's website but said that "these are results I think conservatives should embrace and want to extend as widely as possible."

The deck was heavily stacked against anti-establishment outlier and presidential candidate Ron Paul in the November 22 CNN debate, but the Texas Congressman and medical doctor was able to control the debate and slam his rivals on issues such as the Patriot Act, Supercommittee sequestration, and foreign aid. Paul, who has risen in the polls recently with an anti-war and personal liberty message, faced off in a crowded field of neoconservative opponents and a bevy of hostile questions from the neoconservative Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

Presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum said they'd wage war against Iran if it didn't prove it had given up any hope of obtaining nuclear weapons, while Rep. Ron Paul deferred, saying he'd follow Christian just war principles. The comments were made at a November 19 forum in Des Moines, Iowa.

“I cannot comprehend how my teenage grandson was killed by a Hellfire missile,” a grieving grandfather complained to Time magazine, “how nothing was left of him except small pieces of flesh. Why? Is America safer now that a boy was killed?”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich earned at least $1.6 million between 1999 and 2007 in "consulting" fees from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, Bloomberg News reported November 16, even as Gingrich acknowledged for the first time that he had a larger consulting role than as a staff historian. The figure was more than five times the previously reported amount.

Newt Gingrich's lucrative $300,000 consulting contract with mortgage giant Freddie Mac in 2006 — during the height of the housing bubble it was fueling — was geared toward stopping Republican support for new restraints on the guarantee of sub-prime mortgages, according to a November 15 report by Bloomberg News.

"For Ron Paul to run as an independent," Fox News Channel's Juan Williams wrote back on November 4, "could be the biggest, most consequential third party candidacy in American history. Yes, one that is even bigger than Ross Perot's candidacy was in the 90s."

The November 9 Republican presidential debate in Detroit highlighted the utter economic cluelessness of the overwhelming majority of CNBC hosts and another Rick Perry debate mental lapse (picture at left).

The New York Times called the November 5 "debate" between Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain — supposedly styled on the Lincoln-Douglas debates — "congenial." That was an understatement. The Los Angeles Times came a little closer, calling it a "Vulcan mind meld."

As Tea Party supporters cast about for an alternative to the flip-flopping Mitt Romney (and his long history of political liberalism), an increasing number are turning their eyes back to a face from the political past: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.