INSTITUTE INDEX: Newt for president?

Year in which Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) led a Republican revolution in the U.S. House, going on to become Speaker: 1994

Number of years of Democratic control of the House that election ended: 40

Amount Gingrich was fined by his House colleagues in 1997 over an ethics scandal involving his political use of a tax-exempt college course: $300,000

Number of times the House had previously disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing: 0

Year in which Gingrich resigned both his speakership and his congressional seat following Republican mid-term losses: 1998

Year in which the Republican Party issued the Contract with America, a political document that Gingrich helped craft promising a balanced budget, tax cuts and welfare reform: 1994

By 2000, percent increase in the combined budgets of the 95 federal programs the Contract sought to eliminate: 13

Rank of UST, the country's largest manufacturer of snuff and chewing tobacco, among the contributors to Gingrich's congressional campaign: 1

Year in which Gingrich said the "idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument": 1989

Date on which Citizens United, the conservative group behind the landmark Supreme Court case overturning the ban on corporations funding independent political ads, premiered a film on American exceptionalism narrated by Gingrich: 4/29/2011

Amount Gingrich raised over the past five years for his tax-exempt political committee, American Solutions for Winning the Future: about $52 million

Rank of Gingrich's committee in terms of receipts for the 2010 election cycle: 1

Year in which American Solutions launched its Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less campaign, even though experts say more domestic drilling won't reduce gas prices: 2008

Of the top corporate donors to Gingrich's group, rank of St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company: 1

Amount Peabody donated to Gingrich's committee: $550,000

Amount donated to Gingrich's group by Devon Energy Corp., among the largest U.S.-based independent gas and oil producers: $250,000

By Plains Exploration and Production, a Houston-based oil company: $200,000

By American Electric Power, one of the nation's largest power companies: $100,000

By Arch Coal, a St. Louis-based coal mining company involved in mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia: $100,000

Portion of the amount raised by American Solutions that went to fundraising expenses: 2/3

Percent by which that exceeds the typical figure for many nonprofits: about 200

Percent of Republican voters in a recent poll who said they felt enthusiastic about Gingrich's candidacy: 5

Percent of Republican voters in that same poll who said they were not enthusiastic about any of the potential candidates: 56

(Click on figure to go to source. Photo of Gingrich speaking at the 2011 meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee by Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia.)