Lobbyists to McCain: Gee, Thanks, Traitor

And Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin is still pretty scary: reactions

(NEWSER) - If you thought Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was terrifying in the first Game Change teaser , wait until you see her in the full trailer, where she utters lines such as, "We have to win this thing. I so don’t want to go back to Alaska." Watch below, then read on for some reactions:

• This will clearly be "a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little-known governor into the limelight," writes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . "The full trailer ... gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the 'monster' they’ve created."

Newt reported to a top lobbyist in one-year, $300K deal

(NEWSER) - Newt Gingrich made $25,000 a month working for Freddie Mac, where he reported to one of the company's leading lobbyists, according to his newly released contract with the mortgage giant. The 15 pages unveiled by Gingrich's former firm cover one year of his eight-year, $1.6-million relationship with Freddie—and the documents probably won't satisfy Mitt Romney's demands for records from the period, notes the Washington Post . It offers just a paragraph on the "scope of services and fees," and doesn't give details. More»

HBO debuts first teaser

(NEWSER) - For all of you who have spent the past nine months wondering how Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation will stack up against Tina Fey’s , you finally have your answer. HBO debuted its first teaser trailer for Game Change, the film due in March that's based on the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential election. Neither Ed Harris as John McCain nor Woody Harrelson as top adviser Steve Schmidt sound much like their real-life counterparts, notes David Jackson in USA Today , but Moore’s Palin is spot-on: Numerous publications including People , New York , the Huffington Post , and Jezebel are fairly impressed. More»

Ex-speaker hawked clients' products, arranged meetings

(NEWSER) - Newt Gingrich’s consulting clients all signed contracts saying that Gingrich “does not provide lobbying services of any kind,” but what he did for them looks an awful lot like lobbying to the New York Times . Gingrich actively hawked his clients’ products in his presentations to lawmakers, and arranged meetings between his clients and lawmakers. His Center for Health Transformation advertised that $200,000-per-year clients would gain “contacts at the highest levels” of government and “increase your channels of input to decision makers.” More»

But only for his 'strategic advice'

(NEWSER) - Newt Gingrich raked in somewhere between $1.6 million and $1.8 million over the course of an eight-year span consulting for Freddie Mac, sources tell Bloomberg —a far cry from the $300,000 he was asked about in last week’s CNBC debate. His main contact was the firm’s chief lobbyist, Mitchell Delk. Delk says he never asked Gingrich to do any lobbying “of any kind” for him, however, and that he instead provided “counsel on public policy issues." More»