From the New York Times:

“There is lot more than that to be learned from Mr. Gingrich’s documents, starting with the mockery they make of his claim to be an insurgent Washington outsider, the supposed anti-establishment candidate.

After he was drummed out of the House speaker’s office in 1998, Mr. Gingrich set about creating a lucrative living, by trading on his political connections. In 2010, he reported a total income of $3.16 million (including a tidy $76,200 Congressional pension).

Most of Mr. Gingrich’s income has come from helping corporate clients gain access and solicitous treatment from Washington’s power elite. One of his consulting groups, the Center for Health Transformation, gave clients advice in reaching what it called “top transformational leadership across industry and government.”

His services, according to news accounts, included helping his clients formulate arguments to get lawmakers to incorporate their interests in legislation. Over the years, that included up to $1.8 million in “consulting fees” to him and his firm from Freddie Mac, the lending company that Mr. Gingrich has accused of helping to cause the housing crisis.

Mr. Gingrich insists that none of this highly paid work is lobbying. “I was never a lobbyist,” he said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “I never did any lobbying.”

That is true, in the sense that Mr. Gingrich never registered as a lobbyist — someone who is paid to go to Congressional or government offices and make specific pitches on behalf of special pleaders to influence legislation. But people of his stature never register. They develop strategy and use their contacts to open doors and then leave the appointment-making to more junior people who are registered as lobbyists.

According to The Washington Post, the Gingrich brand generated $100 million in revenue over the past decade for a collection of for-profit enterprises, including that health care group, which charged six-figure dues to large corporations.

So Mr. Gingrich can claim he was never a lobbyist, but there is no way he can claim that he is anything but a Washington insider who has made millions by trading on his political connections for more than a decade. He’s a shrewd broker of Washington influence, and about as “establishment” — and cynical — as you can get.”