Here, try this on for size about your wonderful Newt:
“Newt Gingrich is smarter than you. Don’t feel bad, he’s smarter than everybody else, too. Just ask him. Or look at what he’s done.
Repeated adultery with younger women, while each successive wife was seriously ill -— and all along Newt was proclaiming himself a champion of family values. Attacking mortgage lender Fannie Mae, while secretly getting paid $1.6 million as a lobbyist for them – and claiming he was a “historian,” not a lobbyist. Attacking Congress for gridlock, when personally led the destruction of Congress’ civility and traditions in the 1980s as a “bomb-thrower” and evil genius tactician. (Seriously, look it up.) A half-million charge account at Tiffany’s Jewelers for his latest, youngest woman (that we know of).
All this for 30 years running, and he’s still a leading contender for President as a religious, morally crusading Republican? Yeah, he’s smarter alright. As a historian, he knows Americans forget anything over 5 years old, and the press will ignore your long-term character traits if you give them any new, shiny story to report.
It’s not that Newt lacks charm. My personal favorite thing is that he loves, loves, LOVES dinosaurs! Not in any creepy way, for once, but with the deep enthusiasm of a five-year-old boy. For that matter, notice how many of his “visionary” scientific ideas involve lasers and outer space and huge explosions. That’s adorable. The problem is, most five year olds have a sincere narcissism that would lead them to happily order far-off cities destroyed if they got some candy in return. That’s why we don’t put them in charge of the world.
But ultimately, Gingrich is amazingly similar to Bill Clinton - two are pot smoking, draft-dodging adulterers from poor Southern families. Click on the allegation of your choice:
Adultery:
Callista Bisek. Anne Manning. The unnamed “young volunteer”. Are we missing anyone?
Draft dodger
Dead-Beat Dad
Family Values? Pressing Wife for Divorce in the Hospital
House Banking Scandal: Newt Bounced 22 Checks
Book Deals: Murdoch’s $4.5 Million wasn’t the first
GOPAC sleaze: Taxpayer subsidies for his partisan campaign course.
Corporate reward: $2,500/month to Newt’s wife
Who Owns Him?
Sources:
Quotes:”
Quotes:
“We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’” - Anne Manning (who was also married at the time.)
“We would have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing her [a young volunteer] on the desk.” - Dot Crews, his campaign scheduler at the time
[In the book] “Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them”, [I] “found frightening pieces that related to my own life.” - Newt.
“I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to.” - Newt, speaking to Gail Sheehy.
“She isn’t young enough or pretty enough to be the President’s wife. And besides, she has cancer.” - Newt, on his first wife.
“I don’t want him to be president and I don’t think he should be.” - Newt’s wife Marianne.
“She [Callista] is the single most self-centered person I’ve run into in politics—it’s all about her. They do these movies together, and she does a word count: she has to have the same number of words on camera as he does or they have to reshoot. ...And Callista did not want him to run for President. That’s why he had to buy her so much damn jewelry.” - Will Rogers, Gingrich’s Iowa strategist until he quit in May, 2011
“If the country today were to move to the left, Newt would sense it before it started happening and lead the way.” - Dot Crews, his campaign scheduler throughout the 1970s.
“It doesn’t matter what I do. 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.” - Newt.
Adultery:
Sex on the Desk - Oral Sex is More Easily Denied
Several newspapers are now reporting that Newt Gingrich is dating and basically living with Callista Bisek, a “willowy blond Congressional aide 23 years his junior.” Biske, 33, has been spending nights at Gingrich’s apartment near the Capitol and has her own key. In an amazing act of hypocrisy, Gingrich was apparently dating Bisek all during Clinton-Lewinsky adultery scandal, even as he proclaimed family values and bitterly criticized the President for his adultery.
Reporters and other Washington insiders have known about this relationship since 1994, even before Gingrich became Speaker of the House, but did not have any solid proof to report. In 1995, Vanity Fair magazine described Bisek as Gingrich’s “frequent breakfast companion.” Gingrich was married to Marianne Gingrich during all of that time, and just filed for divorce in August 1999.
Newt is apparently trying to create a new hybrid form, Christian adultery. According to MSNBC, Bisek sings in the National Shrine Choir, and Newt would often wait for her at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, listening to her sing while he read the Bible.
This is hardly the first time Newt has cheated, either. “It was common knowledge that Newt was involved with other women during his [first] marriage to Jackie. Maybe not on the level of John Kennedy. But he had girlfriends — some serious, some trivial.” — Dot Crews, his campaign scheduler throughout the 70s. One woman, Anne Manning, has come forward and confirmed a relationship with him during the 1976 campaign. “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’”
Kip Carter, his former campaign treasurer, was walking Newt’s daughters back from a football game one day and cut across a driveway where he saw a car. “As I got to the car, I saw Newt in the passenger seat and one of the guys’ wives with her head in his lap going up and down. Newt kind of turned and gave me this little-boy smile. Fortunately, Jackie Sue and Kathy were a lot younger and shorter then.”
Sources:
Newly recovered court files cast doubt on Gingrich version of first divorce,” By Alan Duke, CNN, December 27, 2011
Callista quote: The Good Wife: Can Callista Gingrich save her husband?, by Ariel Lev, The New Yorker, January 23, 2012
“Doesn’t matter what I do” quote: John H. Richardson, “Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican,” Esquire Magazine, August 10, 2010
“Newt’s Glass House,” by Stephen Talbot, Salon.com, August 28, 1998
“Newt Plays House With New Squeeze,” by Timothy Burger and Owen Moritz, NY Daily News, August 12, 1999
“Newt’s Fooling Around With His Girl On the Hill,” by Andy Soltis, New York Post, August 12, 1999
“The Big One That Got Away,” by David Corn, Salon Website, August 12, 1998
adulterous choir practice: “Personals”, by Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 1999 pE12
“Gingrich Won’t Answer Woman’s Adultery Story,” Missoula (Montana) Missoulian, August 16, 1995page 1
“Tales About Gingrich make field level”, Idaho Spokesman Review, August 16, 1995 pB6
“Gingrich Aided Export Firm That Employed His Wife”, NY Times News Service, San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 1995 pA7
“Gingrich, Critic of ‘Business as Usual,’ Helps Out Special Interests Like ‘Any Member of Congress’”, Phil Kuntz, Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1995 pA16
“Gingrich’s political education”, Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton (NY Times News Service), San Francisco Examiner, February 12, 1995 pA6
“IRS clears Gingrich donation that led to his House censure”, Capitol Hill Blue Website, February 4, 1999
Ethics Committee Drops Last of 84 Charges Against Gingrich ,By Curt Anderson (Associated Press), Washington Post, October 11, 1998, Page A13
“Use of Tax-Exempt Groups Integral to Political Strategy”, by Charles R. Babcock, Washington Post, January 7, 1997, Page A01
“Jump-Start: How Speaker Gingrich Grabbed Power and Attention So Quickly”, Wall Street Journal, January 19, 1995 pA1
“The Inner Quest of Newt Gingrich”, Gail Sheehy, Vanity Fair, September 1995 p147 “Gingrich, Murdoch reveal lobbyist’s role at meeting”, Katharine Seelye (NY Times News Service), San Francisco Examiner, pA1 “Murdoch, Gingrich Admit They Talked”, San Francisco Chronicle, January 13, 1995
“The Mysterious Mrs. Newt”, Martin Fletcher (London Times News Service), SF Examiner, January 15, 1995 pA4 “Newt’s Near Misses”, Ron Curran, The Bay Guardian, January 11, 1995 p10
“Newt, Inc.”, Dennis Bernstein, Bay Guardian, February 1, 1995 p19
Paid for by Real People For Real Change and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
I remember that liberals took down Bob Livingston, too, when he replaced Gingrich as Speaker, over an affair.
I also remember during the Clinton/Lewinsky times when the liberals were so desperate to show that "everybody does it" that they even dug up a 30-year-old affair with Henry Hyde, of all people.
What do these all have in common? They happened a long time ago.
-PJ