With that said, we're talking about the first Speaker of the House ever to be disciplined by Congress for an ethical wrongdoing. The guy was sanctioned $300,000 on a 395–28 House vote. He had eighty-four ethics charges levied against him. The man's ethical shortcomings cost us the midterm elections in '98, after which he was pretty much ran out of town.
The man announced his intention to divorce his first wife while she was on her hospital bed because he was having an affair with another woman. Although Gingrich denies it, L. H. Carter, Gingrich's former campaign treasurer, claims that Gingrich said, "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer." He remarried just six months after finalizing his divorce, only to have another affair with another woman (almost half his age) while simultaneously going after Bill Clinton for the exact same thing.
The essence of America, everything that makes us good, prosperous, and free, lies within our moral values. Gingrich is a brilliant man who has a way with words but you cannot convince me that he actually "gets" in his heart what makes America tick -- the very way he lives his life and the character he has repeatedly shown proves that he does not get it.
Again, I'm not saying I would not vote for Gingrich. The man has done impressive things and can probably rightfully be credited with stopping Clinton from taking this country in the direction Obama has. But I caution everyone reading to approach the man with the healthy distrust due to all slick politicians and not to be swooned by the fact that he knows how to play to your heartstrings. I pray that I am wrong but Newt Gingrich has struck me as, at the end of the day, always having been in it for Newt Gingrich -- he says and does the things he says and does less because he believes in them and more because he knows it's a fruitful path to power. He did not, after all, go after Bill Clinton because he thought the guy did something wrong, like the rest of us did -- it was something he was doing himself. He did it because he figured it would bolster his own standing.
One can advocate and promote all the right things for all the wrong reasons. As conservatives we distrust the government in part precisely because it is run by politicians like Gingrich. This is what sets us apart from Democrats -- we know we can't trust our guys and we pressure them accordingly. If we start trusting them because they say what they know we want to hear, however... well, we become useful idiots just like those across the aisle.
MWS, why have you so willingly drunk the liberal, MSM and RINO Kool-Aid? We get tired around her debunking the same old urban myths people like to parrot about Newt, because they were too lazy to do a fact-check on them themselves.
ANYONE can level any frivolous ethics charges they want. Don’t you remember that’s how they drove Sarah Palin out of office in Alaska? Pelosi won control of the House in 2006 by claiming all the Republicans were unethical. This is the standard Washington playbook. 83 out of the 84 against Newt were dismissed by the house. They kicked the 84th one to the IRS and the IRS later came back and said Newt was not guilty of anything there either. Newt agreed to pay the $300,000 solely to cover the cost of the investigation. This was resolved almost 2 years before the 1998 election and probably had nothing to do with the results.
Newt specifically said at the time, like I think every Republican repeated over and over at the time, that they went after Clinton for committing perjury, not because he was having an affair. There is NO hypocrisy there, period. Anyone who had more powers of observation than a potted plant at the time would have known this, which makes it suspicious that you’re simply a plant here trolling for another campaign.
It’s a lie that he announced his intention to divorce his wife while she was in the hospital. This accusation was originally made by saying his wife was on her deathbed at the time. Since she’s still alive today, that alone should tell you it was a lie when it was first said and remains a lie today.