Newt was a blessing to Dems because he was such a rallying force for them. Just like James Watt was an enormous boost to the environmental movement because he was such an asshole.

Newt's end came of his own doing. He railed on and on continually about Clinton's illicit affair even though the polls showed it was having a negative effect on 2/3 of americans. Hard to forget the time he said he would never make another speech where he wouldn't talk about Clinton's immorality. When republicans lost seats in '98 that was when his fellow republicans ushered him out the door. As it turned out, Newt was doing a little fooling around himself the entire time he was blasting Clinton for exactly the same thing. The sheer hypocrisy of the man is beyond belief.

As for tolerating corruption, I have never to this day heard one republican, ANY republican, condemn the Ken Starr team for providing the right wing republican lawyers funding Paula Jones' lawsuit against Clinton with illegally obtained information regarding Clinton's affair with Monica. Linda Tripp illegally recorded Monica and then contacted the Ken Starr team. Mysteriously, the next day the private republican lawyers funded by
right wing money had the info about Clinton's affair. The Ken Starr team acted illegally in providing that information, which no less than changed the course of American political history.

I know you and the other right wingers around here will find some way to justify this illegal act which had such a profound impact on America politics, but this was a deliberate criminal act done out of malice and sheer frustration in being unable to prove ANY Clinton wrongdoing in ANY of the other countless multi-million dollar investigations. The Starr time consciously committed a crime in providing the civil suit lawyers with illegally obtained information and they have never been held accountable for it.