Newt Gingrich’s new book is titled “Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine.”
DemWit wants to save America from Newt Gingrich.
To that end, I reprint here (leaning heavily on the “fair use notice” in my sidebar) an article for my readers’ edification.
Gingrich Reconciles Cheating On His Wife While Harping On Family Values: ‘It Doesn’t Matter What I Do’
By Alex Seitz-Wald
ThinkProgress, Aug 10, 2010
In his recently published book and in speaking engagements, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich repeatedly warns that President Obama’s “secular, socialist machine” is threatening to destroy America by undermining the Judeo-Christian “values” upon which the country was built. But while Gingrich chastises the supposed erosion of values on the left, his past is tainted by his own contemptible value judgments, including numerous extra-marital affairs, and pressuring a divorce from his first wife while she lay stricken with cancer in a hospital bed.
In a new Esquire profile, Gingrich’s second wife Marianne — whom he cheated on with his current wife, Callista — breaks her 12-year silence on her relationship with Gingrich to reveal a portrait of a man who understood the deep hypocrisy of his actions, but simply didn’t care:
He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.
He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.
The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.“
Marianne, who was Gingrich’s “closest advisor” during his reign in the 1990s, went on to say that Gingrich “believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected.” But of course, as Gingrich himself demanded when he led a crusade to impeach President Clinton for personal infidelity, politicians’ private lives are inevitably connected to their public ones. Nonetheless, Gingrich has himself admitted to continuing his illicit affair with Callista - 23 years his junior - while simultaneously prosecuting Clinton’s adultery.
Perhaps Gingrich has no qualms about committing the sins he rails against because he doesn’t really believe in what he preaches. Esquire’s John Richardson notes that despite Gingrich’s apocalyptic rhetoric, when encountering radical conservative activists, Gingrich “over and over again … takes the long view and becomes the very soul of probity.”
“I wouldn’t be able to describe what his real principles are,” former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards said of the former speaker. “I never felt that he had any sort of a real compass about what he believed except for the pursuit of power.”
***
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” You betcha!
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9 comments:
Newt is neutered in this article!
GOPers poster hypocrite for their "Family Values" rhetoric: Don't do as I do but do as I say.
Tiny heard too much of that from the pulpit when she was growing up.
This is so typical of the religious (so-called) right. Standards apply to everyone but me.
Jon Stewart blistered ol' Newt last night. Hilarious . . . but it's truly disgusting to think NG is admired by the righties.
You notice, the rich and powerful, be they politicians, businessmen, or religious leaders, they condone activities among themselves that they condemn for everyone else.
They believe they are above all others -- the cornerstone of republican beliefs.
Gingrich is the originator and often the ghostwriter for so much of the Acid-Right's propaganda. Guy makes every hair stand up on the back of my neck and always has. I've learned to pay attention to those warnings.
"Do as I say, not as I do," is the mantra of the Right.
This is the same guy who goes after Mr. Obama who's been in a faithful marriage and is raising two fine young daughters.
Gingrich needs a stiff kick in his hypocritial Republican arse.
LOL, Shaw. I think I would aim my kick for his other side.
Many of the right-wing holier-than-thou morality-mongers are hypocrites, but Gingrich is certainly more blatant about it than most.
Gingrich may believe that "It doesn't matter what I do", but voters are likely to feel otherwise.
Personally I see nothing wrong with promiscuous behavior in and of itself, so long as everyone involved is honest and open about it and no one is being deceived. Promising monogamy and then cheating -- that's where the hypocrisy lies. Doing so and then preaching traditional morality to others, condemning them when they do not conform to it, is hypocrisy squared.
The moral bankruptcy of the right is shown by the fact that many of them would judge the hypocrite Gingrich as better than someone like, say, Barney Frank, who is at least honest about himself and doesn't preach values different from what he lives by.
Leading up to Election 2004 I wrote often on the impact of the Religious Right on the vote. While it was more significant then – remember Howard Dean’s “God, gays and guns” - many ignored it. One friend, “The Greek Warrior,” was stunned, then, when exit polls showed the No. 1 issue – at 27 percent –which concerned American voters was “family values.”
Corporate greed, tax cuts for the wealthy, xenophobia, homophobia do not encourage family values. Caring about education, health care, the environment, the less fortunate and the welfare of Americans in general does.
Gingrich might be doing more for “moral values” than we think: by showing Americans through his own superficiality that there are real choices to be made.
BJ
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