Bob Dole Endorses Mitt Romney, But Doesn’t Explain Gingrich’s Empty Ice Bucket

Bob Dole, a former Senator and Presidential candidate, has come out for Mitt Romney with an open letter to conservatives. Dole starts with Newt Gingrich saying, “I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.” “In 1997 a number of House members wanted to throw him out as Speaker,” Dole wrote. “But he hung on until after the 1998 elections when the writing was on the wall. His mounting ethics problems caused him to resign in early 1999. I know whereof I speak as I helped establish a line of credit of $150,000 to help Newt pay off the fine for his ethics violations. In the end, he paid the fine with money from other sources.” Dole also relied on his experience with Gingrich in his letter saying, “In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year. Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty ice-bucket in his hand—that was a symbol of some sort for him—and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it.” Dole sums it up by endorsing Romney claiming, “in my opionion if we want to avoid an Obama landslide in November, Republicans should nominate Governor Romney as our standard bearer.”