Perhaps it is a coincidence — some may call it karma — but two of the three presidential front-runners in the self-described “party of personal responsibility” have, to put it mildly, sloppy private life stories.
Republicans have long chastised Democrats as the party of loose morals yet while Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-New York) try to court the support of social conservatives, both have at least one failed marriage and bouts of infidelity. Rumored presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has a lot of both.
McCain married his second wife a month after his previous marriage, which included an affair, was dissolved.
Giuliani was married to his second cousin for fourteen years — illegal in dozens of countries and forever dubbed “the weirdness factor.” He had an adulterous affair while married to his second wife and publicly announced his intention to separate from her before he informed her. (However, it is not even close to former House Speaker Gingrich, who served his first wife and former high school math teacher, with divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer. It takes a certain kind of assholeness to do that.) Giuliani is currently working on a third marriage and appears to have forgotten about his past.
The third GOP front-runner, former Governor Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts) has had only one marriage and his wife Ann found it to be a perfect opportunity to take a shot at her husband’s political opponents.
“The biggest difference between Mitt Romney and the other candidates,” she said, is that Mitt has “only had one wife.”
In addition to questioning the moral standing of McCain and Giuliani, Ann Romney basically wrote off the cadre of second tier GOP candidates, not worth mentioning by name, that have had only one wife.
Romney, however, continues to get pummeled for his previously-held socially liberal views.
The lack of enthusiasm for the leading Republican candidates by the conservative base is perhaps a karmic creation of their own prejudices as explained by Chris Rock in his 1999 stand-up Bigger and Blacker:
“Whoever you hate will end up in your family. You don’t like gays? You’re gonna have a gay son. You don’t like Puerto Ricans, you’re daughter’s gonna come home with Livin’ la Vida Locaaa!!!“
And if you hate pro-choicers and gay rights supporters, you get Rudy Giuliani as your front-runner.
13 Responses to “All in the Family”
One little corrective when it comes to my post. I don’t think that Romney is getting attacked “for his previously held social liberals views.” I think that Romney is getting attacked for misrepresenting (Mitt-representing?) his views.
Now he says that he was always pro-life. It is just not true.
He he says he never supported civil unions. It is just not true.
Etc. Mitt Romney doesn’t know truth.
Or, to be more specific Soren, Romney does not believe in video replay.
Marrying your second cousin is not illegal anywhere in the United States, is commonplace in much of Europe, and is (as far as I can make out) illegal mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. I don’t know why the Church would have annulled his marriage, either, because I don’t think it bans second-cousin marriage anymore. I’m pretty sure they ended that ban early in the last century, before Rudy and his cousin were born.
I’m neither married to my cousin nor a Rudy fan. His adulterous affair and multiple marriages qualify him for the values-hypocrite label, but the second-cousin thing is a red herring.
“The biggest difference between Mitt Romney and the other candidates,” she said, is that Mitt has “only had one wife.”
-yeah, except he’s the only one whose religion traditionally (until they had a “convenient” epiphany) approves of however many wives he wants. In fact, Mormonism original taught that a man could not enter heaven unless he had a whole peck of wives. So where does SHE get off anyway?
Oh, I was so hoping for a Romney run. Mormonism is so effed up and a little light shed on it will be like the religious circus freaks coming to town to entertain us all, for free, even.
Giuliani’s second cousin marriage was weird enough that his lack of permission to have it from the Church was grounds for his annulment:
That weirdness, aides reported, stemmed from Giuliani’s 14-year marriage to his second cousin, a union that he got annulled by claiming to have never received proper dispensation from the Catholic Church for the unorthodox nuptials
It’s not a question of it being “illegal.” It’s weird. It’s borderline incest and is a type of marriage so rare that it would be subject to approval or disapproval from the Catholic Church to move forward.
[...] Singer thinks it is the downward trend – and not the gross numbers – for the top-tier Republican candidates that is most important in comparison to the Democratic numbers, which hold strong. While I agree that these numbers likely reflect a generic advantage for Democrats going into 2008, I think the shift in support is more likely connected to people getting to know McCain and Giuliani better and just not liking what they see. McCain is hated by the religious right and is a main proponent of escalating an unpopular war. Giuliani is considered too socially moderate for the Republican base and his recent propensity to equate New York City and Baghdad is pissing off more than a few voters. Both have marital histories littered with adultery, multiple marriages, and in Giuliani’s case, a borderline incestuous marriage. [...]
[...] One thing observers of the fight for the Republican presidential nomination have to wonder about is who the Christian right will vote for. Rudy Giuliani is leading John McCain in most polls, and neither of them really has their Christian right bona fides in order, what with their multiple marriages, Giuliani’s pro-gay-rights, pro-choice history, McCain’s poor relationship with Christian conservatives in 2000 and thereafter, and so on into the night. [...]
[...] Other leading Republican contenders have committed adultery (adding to a list of negatives) which should be enough for any smart Latter-day Saint to disqualify such a person for this nation’s most powerful position. Clearly any sleazy politician with such latent moral ambiguity is not the proper person to guide this divinely-established nation. [...]
[...] leading Republican contenders have committed adultery (adding to a list of negatives) which should be enough for any smart Latter-day Saint to disqualify [...]
Something to say?
[...] Cross-posted at The Right’s Field. [...]
Left by Politics: 2008 HQ » Blog Archive » Matt Ortega: All in the Family
February 13, 2007 at 2:55am