Part one of a two-part commentary from A Tea Party conservative who expresses misgivings over the Republican presidential candidacy process

Not encouraging was a posting I read by Erick Erickson on Thursday, February 2nd, Horserace for February 2, 2012, in which those who had examined the Florida exit polls found that the vote total was down; however, in counties where turn out was up, Newt Gingrich won.  Subsequently, where turnout from 2008 was down in Florida, Romney won.  This pattern followed suit in South Carolina. http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/02/02/horserace-for-february-2-2...

Not unlike an article I previously posted,  I still perceive the 2012 Republican presidential race to be tug of war between Tea Party conservatives and the Republican Establishment, with the Establishment pulling out all stops to get rid of out-of-step conservatives who dare to challenge the Establishment status quo

This is not to say that the Republican Establishment doesn't attempt to win over Tea Party conservatives at election time, as conservative base voters are essential to winning elections, but in the aftermath Tea Party conservatives are more often than not marginalized by status quo Republicans until needed once again when election time rolls around.

Presently Establishment Republicans are targeting their pent-up fury against Newt Gingrich. 

None other than Thomas Sowell perceived the same in an article published at Townhall Daily on January 31st entitled, The Florida Smear Campaign, in which Sowell writes (Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust): 

"The Republican establishment is pulling out all of the stops to try to keep New Gingrich from becoming the party's nominee for the President of the United States -- and some are not letting the facts get in the way."

One very important false claim noted by Thomas Sowell, and which I still become outraged over whenever I hear newscasters even on Fox News ignore the truth, was that of Newt Gingrich resigning in disgrace as Speaker of the House of Representatives as a result of unethical conduct involving the diversion of tax-exempt money.  

Is the Romney camp and the Republican establishment unaware that The Wall Street Journal published on January 28, 2010, 2,180 pages of on-line records, publicly available, which proclaim the following:

"Although Speaker Gingrich decided not to take on the task of fighting the charge from his political enemies in 1997, the Internal Revenue Service conducted its own investigation which, two years later, exonerated Gingrich from the charges.  Newt's resignation was not due to those charges and occurred much later."