The Associated Press is reporting that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R) had an extramarital affair during the House probe against President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.
“The honest answer is yes,” Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. “There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There’s certainly times when I’ve fallen short of God’s standards.”
Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton’s infidelity.
Gingrich, despite not actively campaigning, still has a lot of grassroots support within the conservative movement, as noted by Matt Browner Hamlin.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s marital indiscretions, along with his socially liberal views, are cited as possible derailments on the path to the Republican nomination. Newt and Rudy are tied at three marriages a piece but Gingrich was the face of the Republican Revolution that saw the GOP takeover Congress in 1994.
Though Giuliani’s past includes an annulled marriage to a second cousin that lasted fourteen years, Gingrich’s contradictory private and public lives provide much more fodder.
Newt’s first wife and former geometry teacher, Jacqueline, was served with divorce papers in 1980 while in the hospital for cancer treatment after 18 years of marriage.
Gingrich had an affair during his first marriage in 1977. Reported the Village Voice in February 1998:
If you believe Newt Gingrich’s former mistress Anne Manning, the Speaker has for decades relied on the blowjob as the sex act with built-in plausible deniability. Referring to her first date in 1977 with Gingrich, Manning told Vanity Fair in 1995: “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’” [emphasis added]
That is about the most calculating political maneuver — ever.
Robert Scheer noted in the Los Angeles Times in December 1994:
But did he have to be so mean about it? As reported by L.H. Carter, his campaign treasurer, Newt said of Jacqueline: “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer.” [emphasis added]
So much for “death do us part,” ey Newt?
The year after his divorce from his first wife, Newt married Marianne Ginter. She spoke to Vanity Fair’s Gail Sheehy in September 1995 about a potential presidential run by Gingrich:
What happens if Newt runs?, I ask.
“He can’t do it without me,” she replies. “I told him if I’m not in agreement, fine, it’s easy” –she giggles at her naughtiness. “I just go on the air the next day, and I undermine everything…I don’t want him to be president and I don’t think he should be.”
Why not?
“Right now, the presidency is not a single person. It’s not so much what he’d be doing. It’s what I’d be doing.” [original emphasis]
He later divorced her — after 17 years of marriage and an extramarital affair. No word on if she was too ugly to be the First Lady.
In 1995, Gingrich spoke about the “moral decay of the left,” Scheer wrote for the Los Angeles Times in August 1999. (In that column, Scheer noted that Gingrich’s former mother-in-law from his second marriage said that Newt’s divorce from Marianne was “about the cruelest thing you could do.”)
Newt divorced Marianne in 1999. He married Callista Bisek, the woman he had an affair with during his second marriage, later that year. According to Gingrich’s marital history, with marriages lasting 18 and 17 years respectively, she has about another nine or ten years left on her.
7 Responses to “Gingrich Admits to Affair During ‘98 Clinton Probe”
See what I mean in my last topic, here Newt saying that he cheated on his wife whom was dying at the time this happen, and the neocons will forgive him, even though we knew that he had done this a while ago, its old news to us librals maybe it new news to the peoples of values the Repub party I don’t think so, they just turned their heads and close theirs eyes and prayed that it would go away, but the newt is backkkkkk, like he didn’t do anything wrong while he was in congress, he was kick out as the speaker by his own party wonder why.
[...] Gingrich recently admitted to James Dobson that he had an affair while he was heading the charge against President Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Now repentance should not be underestimated by political commentators, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing if moralizers like Falwell and Dobson placed an iota of importance on hypocrisy. Thus there is real cognitive dissonance between respecting someone’s value as a commencement speaker because they are a moral person who practices fidelity and is not a hypocrite and someone who is a moral person because they had the sense to repent their sins. [...]
Who cares that the guy had an affair, who cares that Clinton had an Affair, the thing was the Clinton lied to all of us, and that is where Newt is one-up on Clinton.
[...] Gingrich admitted to having an extramarital affair during the Clinton impeachment on Dobson’s radio show. That move was rewarded by another conservative leader, Jerry Falwell, with a speaking gig at Falwell’s Liberty University. Dobson is also a member of the Arlington Group, a collection of conservative leaders who are vetting some of the Republican contenders for endorsement. Gingrich is one of the candidates who has been interviewed and is in contention for their bulk endorsement. [...]
Something to say?
Wow. These guys just don’t understand the concept of fidelity. Amazing.
Left by Matt Browner Hamlin
March 9, 2007 at 12:48am