Perhaps like others who hope for a Romney nomination, I like Gingrich.  I wish him well -- I hope he continues to prosper and to generate ideas for the conservative movement.  However, his shining oratory has outpaced the cogency of the ideas expressed therein.  As he tries to gin up populist resentment against Romney's wealth, he has lost all philosophical and political coherence.  He needs to be called out with regard to his mocking of Romney's tax payments, in particular.

As was pointed out in a news release from Reuters, Newt's tax code ideas would mean that people like Romney would pay much less in taxes -- nothing, actually --  whereas Romney's tax proposals would be much more progressive by comparison.  If Newt believes that Romney's paying 15 percent on his capital gains is somehow unethical or otherwise worthy of ridicule, he needs to be advocating tax reform which would ensure those "in the upper one percent" pay more, not less on their income.  He cannot have it both ways. 

Under Gingrich's plan, Romney would pay nothing in taxes, nor would billionaire hedge fund managers pay anything, who also report their income as capital gains.  Newt's plan would not only mean that Romney would pay zero in taxes on capital gains, but that he would pay nothing in taxes at all!

Under Romney's tax plan, those who earn under $200,000 would not pay capital gains taxes, and therefore this cut would not benefit him personally.  Instead, Romney's tax proposals on capital gains would simply maintain the status quo as it would apply to those making more than 200k annually.

According to another report from Reuters, Gingrich's tax records reveal that he paid thirty-one percent income taxes and that his income comes from his media and consulting conglomerates, Gingrich Productions and Gingrich Consulting.  A lot of that income probably derives from lobbying, but his tax returns are not particularly transparent and therefore his fees and clients from lobbying are not clear for the public to see.

Gingrich pays taxes at a higher rate not necessarily due to his civic virtue, but due to the tax code. That tax code locks Romney in at 15 percent regardless of his own volition.  As Gingrich probably realizes, most Americans who are just casual observers of politics will not make such distinctions.  He wants to benefit from populist resentment of wealth disparity while advocating policies that would exacerbate that disparity.  That hardly makes Newt the working class hero he is apparently positioning himself to be. 

Malcolm can be contacted at Malcolmunwell@yahoo.com.