Wertheimer: Oh, it's a subject shift. It's kind of a way of trying to move attention, to create his own devil. Somehow the devils are no longer the PACs that he used to call a grotesque distortion of popular will. Somehow the devils are no longer the corrupt way in which the campaign finance system creates enormous advantages for incumbents--starting with his incumbent control over Congress.

It's simply a way of trying to move the issue around. This is part of the way he operates. He uses words as weapons. He uses the issues, as I said before, of corruption as ethics, as patrician tactics. It can't work in this area. The American people fully understand that when you have wealthy individuals and corporations and labor unions putting up contributions of one hundred thousand dollars, two-hundred thousand dollars, a million dollars, that's corrupting the political process. And there is no way in the world that Newt Gingrich, no matter what technique, what tactics, or what words he uses, is gonna talk the American people out of it.

Q: He spent a lot of time attacking millionaire incumbents candidates, saying rich people can spend their own money, they don't have to worry about raising money, they just buy their office and then they're in. Why single out millionaires?

Wertheimer: Well, because millionaires are a problem in the system. A millionaire has a big advantage, in terms of being able to spend all his/her money. However, they're a small problem compared to the so-called soft money system, which has allowed millions and millions and millions of dollars in huge corrupt contributions to come into the political process of both parties.

The soft money system was used to fuel his own PAC, GOPAC. Now, last Congress when he had no power, he co-sponsored legislation to shut down the soft money system. To end it. When he testified recently, that wasn't on his mind somehow. So if you talk about millionaires, you ignore the biggest problem in the system, you're trying to get people's attention away from the real problem. He has played games with the issue of money and politics for a career when he was in the minority and now he's playing games when he's in the majority. The stakes are much larger for him now because huge, huge amounts of money are flowing to the speaker and his party, at the Congressional level, at the party level and they don't want to turn those spigots off. They want to let that corrupting money keep flowing -- How do they do it as revolutionaries?

You talked about the speaker describing himself as a citizen politician. But he's a citizen politician that is sitting on and being fueled by the political donor class of America. You know, you can only straddle that line for so long. And they are trying to straddle it. The speaker is trying to argue that money corrupts when it goes to Democrats. Ethics are a problem when they go to Democrats. The institution is corrupt when the Democrats control it. Now we control things. We shouldn't spend too much time worrying about drowning in this special interest influence money, let us do our populist revolution. But you know, these people who are putting up these huge sums of money, they expect something from this so-called populist revolution. So are we going to get a populist revolution? Or are we gonna get the buying and selling of American public policy? That's a big question as this plays out.

Q: One of the things Newt talked about yesterday was that he wants more money. He says that the Atlanta Constitution and the networks have billions of dollars and that the campaigns are, in fact, under-financed and we've got to raise the personal contribution limits.

Wertheimer: Well, somehow he's managed to rise to the second most powerful job in America. So the notion that poor Speaker Gingrich can't make it on all of the money he's put together for his financial empire, is basically a joke. I mean, it's another form of subject shift. He's partially right. Challengers need more money. Incumbents don't have a problem getting money and if you increase the individual contribution limit from a thousand to five thousand dollars, which means an individual could give ten thousand dollars, how does that fit with citizen politics? How many citizens in America can give ten thousand dollars to a politician? So what that does is make the handful of rich people in America even more powerful in Newt Gingrich's system and citizens less powerful.

But Newt Gingrich has managed to oppose every comprehensive reform effort that in part was designed to get more money to challengers. He opposed public financing. Fine. There are proposals for free tv time. I haven't heard him talking about that. There are proposals to require networks and broadcasters to sell time at fifty percent below cost. That's a way of reducing the cost. That would be very helpful for challengers. I haven't heard him talking about that. I don't want to call his approach to all of this a flim-flam, but, it is. That's what we're dealing with here. And here is the test: you always have to watch and see what the speaker is saying about the soft money system. That's the system that allows the largest contributions, unlimited contributions from corporate America, unlimited contributions from wealthy individuals, to flow into Washington and to exercise enormous influence at the expense of the average citizen.

You have to remember that when the speaker had no power, he said, shut that system down. And as long as the speaker is not supporting and talking about shutting down the system, that is the biggest finance abuse in America, You know, the speaker is not for real on campaign finance reform. You know he's trying to have it both ways. Out of this side of the mouth he's trying to say we gotta deal with this problem. This is a serious problem. But when it comes to the use of his power, his power is being used to make sure that the heart of this corrupt system stays in place.