What Does Nancy Know About Newt?

It was during an interview with CNN’s John King in which former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dropped the tease that has electrified political junkies. When King -- who verbally tousled with former House Speaker/current GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich during a recent debate -- asked Pelosi her thoughts about the possibility of Gingrich becoming commander in chief, Pelosi responded, “That will never happen . . . He’s not going to be president of the United States.”

King pressed her. How could she be so sure that he'll never become president? “There’s something I know,” she said. "The Republicans, if they choose to nominate him, that’s their prerogative. I don’t even think that’s going to happen.”

This, as you might expect, has led to wild speculation about whether Pelosi has some juicy, scandalous information that she plans to unload if Gingrich gets the nomination. On Twitter, people have turned it into a #WhatNancyKnows parlor game.

We already do know quite a bit about Gingrich, or we’ve heard stories . . . the infidelities, the alleged request for the open marriage, the hypocrisy over lecturing about family values, the ethics scandal, the Tiffany's line of credit, yet this tantalizing nugget from Pelosi is driving everybody crazy. It has even compelled Mitt Romney’s campaign to create a new ad to scare Republican voters into not voting for Gingrich lest Pelosi sabotage the GOP by detonating Gingrich's campaign in the general election with some new dirt.

Even though Pelosi has tried to tamp down all the excitement her statement caused -- saying that she was simply referring to what’s already in the public record, specifically the House Ethics report on Gingrich from the 1990s -- I’m not buying it. That’s not what it seemed like she was saying to John King, at all.

Making things more interesting is the fact that in December Pelosi reportedly told a reporter for the Talking Points Memo: “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

How bad could what she knows really be? Seriously, look at what’s happened over the past few years, zany tales that seem as though they were ripped off from a bad, improbable TV drama. Politicians, high profile ones at that, have made some really stupid decisions:

A no nonsense, tough New York governor  was shamed out of office when it was discovered he’d been messing around with a call girl. A South Carolina governor disappeared for days, said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, then admitted he was in Argentina with his soul mate, a woman who was not his wife. A New York Congressman, who had a pregnant wife at home, sent nude photos of himself to strangers over Twitter. A California governor admitted that he cheated on his wife with the family’s housekeeper, fathered a child by her (a baby who was born a week apart from a child he had with his wife) and kept the mistress working at the home. A 2008 Democratic candidate for president fathered a child with a consultant to his campaign, tried to cover it up by having another campaign supporter say that he was the father, all the while, continuing to campaign for president while his wife was battling cancer for a second time. One of the 2012 GOP candidates for president dropped out of the race after multiple women claimed he’d sexually harassed them and another woman said she had an affair with the married businessman.

So, back to this campaign . . . what could Nancy Pelosi have been implying? Here are some outlandish guesses about what Pelosi knows the guy who walks around saying he thinks “grandiose” thoughts and, just this week, announced that he wants to colonize the moon (seriously). My guesses are as good as any of the other looney real life stories that have unfolded recently:  

• Mitt Romney isn’t the only Republican candidate who had a mishap with a vehicle and a family pet.
• Newt just recently had his 9-9-9 tatoo removed.
• Gingrich has a secret wall in his home office covered with photos of Snookie.
• Anthony Weiner is the one who taught Newt how to “tweet.”
• Newt’s preferred ringtone? Rod Stewart's “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
• Gingrich accidentally left behind an album full of Polaroids in the back of one of the desk drawers of the Speaker’s office. Suffice is to say, Newt knows what Victoria’s Secret is.
• The real story about how John Kerry got those black eyes and a broken nose . . . it involved Newt and two words: Fight. Club.

What do you think Pelosi has on Gingrich, if anything? Or is this all a bluff? What do you make of Pelosi trying to play down what she was obviously trying to gin up when she spoke with John King?