Month: January 2012

Sorry to break it to ABC News, but the facts of Newt Gingrich’s request for an open marriage are not new. They were laid out in full in the brilliant profile of Gingrich by John H Richardson in Esquire last year. Money quote:

Early in May, she went out to Ohio for her mother’s birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn’t return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.

“About what?”

He wanted to talk in person, he said.

“I said, ‘No, we need to talk now.’ “

He went quiet.

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. ” ‘I can’t handle a Jaguar right now.’ He said that many times. ‘All I want is a Chevrolet.’ “

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

My italics. We know this already. The interview is not a news story. It’s a publicity stunt. And its timing and motives might even backfire in Newt’s favor.

Question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com Video archive here.

Nonmonogamous marriage proponent Dan Savage weighs in:

Technically you're not asking your wife for an open marriage if you've already been fucking another woman for six years. You're presenting her with an ultimatum. That doesn't make you a proponent of open marriage, Newt, it makes you a CPOS [Cheating Piece Of Shit].

I don't think Newt has made himself a proponent of open marriage; he's just a flawed individual, as we all are. I think going on TV and trashing your ex-husband in the days before a critical primary is bitter, bitter, bitter. But I'm a Christian. The private stuff I forgive and understand. Like many men, over the years, my libido has sometimes seemed to have a life of its own. I think we should all give people's private consensual adult sex lives alone. But the public hypocrisy? The ranting about gay marriage destroying America? The lecturing of the poor on family structure? Not so much.

It was a gracious speech, and one where an actual Christian moment occurred – not Christianist, Christian:

With a loving wife, a loving family and a loving God who is in my life, things are going to be good whatever we do.

There were some off moments: probably not the best idea, given his debate performances to say:

As a former Air Force pilot, I don't often get confused.

Then the substance. First: he defines Gingrich as the conservative candidate, as opposed to Romney, who implicitly isn't. And he links Gingrich, in language identical to the Gingrich campaign that portrays Newt as a long toiler in the fields of the conservative movement, from the 1970s on:

The mission is greater than the man. Newt is a conservative visionary who can transform this country.

And then, in direct response to Marianne Gingrich's possible stab in the front tonight, Perry reaches out to evangelicals, to persuade them that Gingrich has been converted:

There is forgiveness who seek God and I believe in the power of redemption.

That, I think is how Gingrich and Perry and Palin will tackle the ex-wife bombshell. They will say he has changed since then and not to forgive is to violate Christianity itself. They will also go on the warpath against ABC News, and try to turn this into a media elites vs real Americans.

I'll be candid. I find myself rooting for Gingrich in South Carolina. Yes, because for a blogger, it's total crack. But also, because in terms of delegates, this race has barely begun. To close it down now would be a disservice to all of them. Romney is a terribly weak candidate who has had a terrible week. And we still have no idea what the evangelicals in, er, "quiet rooms", actually think about voting for a Mormon.

(Photo: Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks to the media at Hyatt Place January 19, 2012 in North Charleston, South Carolina. Perry, who placed fifth in Iowa and New Hampshire, announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsed former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. By Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

And so the race is suddenly fluid again, as South Carolina works its usual magic. Palin and Perry have now put their weight behind Gingrich; that might lead to an evangelical surge away from Santorum to Newt. But wait! More drama: Newt's ex-wife is going on Nightline tonight to say that Gingrich asked her to stay married for public appearances but allow him to keep his relationship with Callista, Super-Catholic, as well. What will Father McCloskey make of that? Jesus:

Marianne said Gingrich conducted his affair from “my bedroom in our apartment in Washington” and during the time he led the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton—a time when Marianne defended his ethics. She said Gingrich proceeded with the divorce only months after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, when a doctor had advised she not have any stress. At the time of the divorce, Marianne said Gingrich told her that Callista was “going to help him become president.”

I have no problem with how people want to arrange their marriages however they want; it's their business, not mine. And I find Newt's ex-wife timing on this pretty bitter. Hell hath no fury … I guess. But coming from the man who made a career out of trashing the Clintons' marriage, it's a little rich. Will that stop Newt's surge?As Bubble would note, who can say?

Meanwhile, the anti-Romney rhetoric is still white-hot. John Hawkins, of Right Wing News, doesn't hold back:

If you were trying to come up with the most atrocious candidate imaginable to go toe-to-toe with Barack Obama in 2012, you couldn't do much better than Mitt Romney. He was an unpopular moderate governor who lost 2 out of the 3 major elections he's run in and whose signature issue Romneycare is an enormous failure. Moreover, he's so uninspiring that he makes Bob Dole look like Ronald Reagan and that's before you consider his incessant flip-flopping that makes it impossible to really know where he stands on any issue. Romney's candidacy also runs counter to almost every political trend in the book right now. He's the antithesis of everything the Tea Party stands for — a moderate establishment-endorsed, principle-free Rockefeller Republican. On the other hand, he's like a bad guy straight out of central casting for the Occupy Wall Street crowd, a conscience-free 1 percenter who makes $10,000 bets and lectures the public about how corporations are people — while hordes of poor and middle class Americans that he fired trail in his wake telling tales of woe about how Romney made their lives into a living hell.

More on Mitt's troubled electability here, here, here and here. The above image is from a comparison of candidates to superheroes:

Mitt Romney is Plastic Man.  The name matches the candidate's smile and the power to stretch oneself matches Romney's ability to tie himself into knots as he tries to explain his rapidly evolving political positions.

Maybe:

What seems safer to conclude is that no candidate other than Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich is likely to win in South Carolina. If Rick Santorum had gotten a major boost by winning the support of evangelical groups over the weekend, for instance, we might have expected to see some clearer evidence of that by now. Mr. Santorum has moved ahead of Ron Paul and into third place in our forecasts, but his overall trajectory has been quite flat.

Update: Two new South Carolina polls put Gingrich ahead of Romney.

J.F. at DiA marks Rick Perry's departure from the race:

Mr Perry's problem has always been the culture-warrior's problem: only opposition moves him. He can rile a crowd as well as—and in the same way as—Pat Buchanan. Let a thousand pitchforks gleam! But then what? Ask Ron Paul why he wants to be president and he’ll bang on about fractional banking and the Fed and sound money and raw milk until he dislocates his shoulders from excessive twitching. … Ask Mr Perry why he wanted to be president and all he could tell you is how awful the other guys are. That was necessary but insufficient. The crowd knew it, and apparently he does too now.

Dave Weigel expects Gingrich to benefit:

Maggie Haberman's sources tell her that Perry endorse Newt Gingrich on his way out the door. But Perry's exit was a de facto Gingrich endorsement anyway. His strength, according to Dawson, was going to come from the Piedmont and from parts of the state with big veteran communities. With Perry out, there's 5 percent or so of the electorate that 1) are dead-set against Mitt Romney and 2) want to cast some kind of anti-establishment vote (as hard as that is to define), and there's Gingrich, puffed up from Sarah Palin's endorsement, ready to reel 'em in.

St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, 1.31 pm

Michael Kazin contemplates it:

Put simply, the Christian Right is getting old. According to the largest and most recent study we have of American religion and politics, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, almost twice as many people 18 to 29 confess to no faith at all as adhere to evangelical Protestantism. Young people who have attended college, a growing percentage of the population, are more secular still. Catholicism has held its own only because the Church keeps gathering in newcomers from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, few of whom are likely to show up at a Santorum rally. To their surprise, Putnam and Campbell discovered that conservative preachers infrequently discuss polarizing issues from the pulpit. Sermons about hunger and poverty far outnumber those about homosexuality or abortion. On any given Sunday, just one group of Christians routinely grapples with divisive political issues: black Protestants, the most reliably Democratic constituency of them all.