Newt Gingrich has been suffering a gender gap. Not among those with whom he wants to get married–he’s on number 3–but among the female punditry, for sure.
The latest is Authentically Newt-ered by Debra J. Saunders.
This year, Gingrich is playing to the tea party crowd. He and his wife are about to release a new movie, “America at Risk” on national security threats. As a tea party courtier, he rails against carbon taxes. His political action committee has raised $250,000 from an Oklahoma natural gas and oil producer, and $100,000 from Arch Coal of St. Louis, Politco.com reported.
Two years ago, however, the Newter was seated on a loveseat next to Speaker Nancy Pelosi starring in TV ads for Al Gore’s global warming campaign. Quoth Gingrich, “We do agree, our country must take action against climate change.” And: “If enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need.”
Consider Gingrich to be the right’s Jerry Brown. Like the former and would-be next California governor, Gingrich talks big, but has no loyalty to his ideas. He was for tax cuts before he was against them. He supported a $35,000 congressional pay raise and leaner government.
Like Brown, Gingrich’s real skill has been in seeing a trend early and jumping on it, unencumbered by any past positions.
Saunders gives her reasons for jumping bad on “the Newter” later in the piece, but it doesn’t affect her analysis.
“Like Brown, Gingrich’s real skill has been in seeing a trend early and jumping on it, unencumbered by any past positions” is as good an observation about Gingrich as I’ve seen in the past months.
But Saunders is not alone. In Newt Gingrich: Conservative Feminist Evaluates Mr. Speaker, Red State Gal effectively hit Gingrich for his less-than-exemplary behavior in private.
Red State Feminists are conservative, no doubt about it. But RSFs are not seduced by every conservative blowhard that thinks he should be president. Case in point? Newt Gingrich.
Yes, when we last met Newt, he was shutting down the government in a stand-off with Bill Clinton, then resigning his seat in disgrace under ethics charges which were upheld. Today he has resurrected himself as an eminence grise of the Republican Party, with bold ideas for a renaissance not only of the Party, but also of his own political career. He even has presidential aspirations.
But, oh, the baggage that man carries! We are all SO DARN TIRED of conservative leaders whose personal lives look like something from the nether regions of Dante’s Inferno. Newt has the unpleasant distinction of dumping two wives for young aides he charmed as their boss. UGH. Furthermore, his second wife, Marianne Gingrich, married to him for eighteen years, had just received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis when she got word he wanted to divorce her. In fact, according to Marianne, “He’d already asked [his now-third wife] to marry him before he asked me for a divorce. Before he even asked.” Q: “He told you that?” “Yeah . . . ” Not only that, but while Marianne was away visiting relatives, the soon-to-be third wife “was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed”!
–From Newt for President? Ask His Second Wife
Google “Newt Gingrich + divorce” and the search engine returns over 124,000 results, the great majority of them negative. Similar results await the searcher for info on “Newt Gingrich + wife’s cancer.”
Of course, Gingrich never did have many fans among the women on the Left, but now, it appears that he’s anathema to women on the other side of the political spectrum as well.
Which, after Newt’s performance on Al Gore’s infamous couch with Nancy Pelosi, is a perfectly-karmic punishment for the equally-infamous marital transgressions of Newt Gingrich.
Both events highlight that while Gingrich may be “an ideas man,” his character and rectitude–using Karl Rove’s description of Christine O’Donnell’s main flaw–have a certain among of malleable elasticity to them.
by Mondo Frazier
image: dbkp file
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