This is one of those stories about a special kind of morally ambiguous hypocrit who pulpits family values and lives a life entirely different. But like any typical Republican, Newt Gingrich is hoping America will forgive and forget about his shameful past. One problem, divorce wife number 2 has spoken out back in August 2010 - against the Newt!
She was married to Newt Gingrich for eighteen years, all through his spectacular rise and fall, and here she is in a pair of blue jeans and a paisley shirt, with warm eyes and a big laugh and the kind of chain-smoking habit where the cigarettes burn right down to the filter — but she's quitting, she swears, any day now.
We're having breakfast in a seaside restaurant in a Florida beach town, a place where people line up in sandals and shorts. This is the first time she's talked about what happened, and she has a case of the nerves but also an air of liberation about her. Since he was a teenager, Newt Gingrich has never been without a wife, and his bond with Marianne Gingrich during the most pivotal part of his career made her the most important advisor to one of the most important figures of the late twentieth century. Of their relationship, she says, "We started talking and we never quit until he asked me for a divorce."
She sounds proud, defiant, maybe a little wistful. You might be inclined to think of what she says as the lament of an abandoned wife, but that would be a mistake. There is shockingly little bitterness in her, and she often speaks with great kindness of her former husband. She still believes in his politics. She supports the Tea Parties. She still uses the name Marianne Gingrich instead of going back to Ginther, her maiden name.
But there was something strange and needy about him. "He was impressed easily by position, status, money," she says. "He grew up poor and always wanted to be somebody, to make a difference, to prove himself, you know. He has to be historic to justify his life."
She says she should have seen the red flags. "He asked me to marry him way too early. And he wasn't divorced yet. I should have known there was a problem." Link
The 2 divorced in 2000. Maybe Newt should have waited a little longer before announcing his possible run for the White House. Just long enough for that "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned" feeling to completely subside?!
But like John McCain, Newt left wife #1 while she was in a hospital recovering from Cancer Surgery.
But again, I wonder if Marianne buys into Newt's explanation of why he cheated on her:
There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God. Link
I cheat because I am an American!
And Evangelicals believes in Redemption (of course, forgiveness is ONLY reserved for other fellow Republican believers). Christians, you are pathetic if you buy into his explanation.
Pfffft!!!!
