Please don't be so easily manipulated into repeating nonsense phrases from the Mittstream Media like "resigned in disgrace." Newt's frivolous ethics charges were settled 2 years into his Speakership and 2 years before he resigned. He resigned shortly after the 1998 election because they lost 5 seats after expecting to have big gains and he would have been voted out. Of course we know the big-spending RINOs wanted him out all along and probably just used the election as an excuse. Regardless, losing an election isn't a "disgrace," it's just politics. What Mitt is saying is as honest as saying, "Reagan was voted into office and then 300 marines were bombed in Lebanon." By making it sound like no time passed between those events, Mitt is saying there is a cause and effect relationship there that anyone who knows the truth knows doesn't exist.
Why he went ahead and quit the House beyond the Speakership itself at the same time, I can only imagine he wanted to move into the private sector, set up a run for President (that was derailed after his marriage fell apart), or just didn't feel comfortable becoming just another vote in the chamber after being Speaker for 4 years.
Yes, he resigned because of election results, not because of the findings in the ethics probe.
But I still don't get it. I can understand resigning the Speakership. By why resign your seat in Congress? Why not continue fighting from the back bench, so to speak?
The resignation so close to the ethics probe looks bad. It looks like a resignation in disgrace. It looks like he resigned either because of his ethics problems, or because his fellow Republicans had absolutely no confidence in him. That may be very unfair to Newt, but that's the way it looks.
Lesson to conservatives: stay and fight!