Why is it that hardly anyone — not the media nor the other candidates — directly challenge Gingrich’s claim to have a conservative record? After the 1996 election, then-Speaker Gingrich turned against many aspects of the Contract with America, sought to placate the old bulls of appropriations, and gave D.C.’s environmental establishment a de facto veto over regulatory reforms. It was these steps (and his erratic leadership style), more than the trumped up ethics charges, that led to his eventual ouster, yet neither Romney nor anyone else makes much of an issue of it. Romney, instead, devotes his resources to misleading attacks on Gingrich’s ethics, and media interviewers (like Chris Wallace on Fox News this morning) ask Gingrich to respond to the likes of Bob Dole, not those who were closer to the revolution, like Joe Scarborough.