Posted on 08/12/2010 5:17:49 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Newt Gingrich is a phoenix. He's risen again and again from political ashes and appears to be ascendant once more. Rumored to be running for president in 2012, Gingrich is an icon in the Republican Party, an eminence grise at a time of lost leadership. His fall from grace in the late 1990s seems a blip, rather than a political ending. Thus the cover story in Esquire Magazine, September issue, written by John H. Richardson.
If anyone knows something about Newt Gingrich, it is his former wife, Marianne, and Richardson scored an interview with her. She is someone with a bone to pick, one that stems from the ending of their 18-year marriage with an affair. She knows a lot, and has never before spoken out. Richardson notes she is a "Tea Party" conservative. She believes in what she thought Newt Gingrich believed in, too.
Newt proposed to Marianne (she was 28, he 36) in 1980 while his first wife, Jackie, was in the hospital recovering from treatments for uterine cancer. He hadn't yet even asked her for a divorce. Newt met Jackie in high school. She was his geometry teacher. He was sixteen, she was 25. When he left, Jackie was nearly destitute. Jackie, the Esquire story reports, "had to get a court order just to pay her utility bills." These are among the personal tidbits that Marianne Gingrich (she kept his name, these 10 years since the divorce and subsequent annulment), drops casually into the Esquire writer's lap as she smokes endlessly, each cigarette "down to the filter."
Some of the revelations are small -- Newt hated to be criticized for his weight, more than anything. Some of them challenge the folksy narrative Gingrich has created for himself, about his mother, for example. "She was pretty drugged up for a long time," Marianne tells Richardson.
Some of them are explosive in a town that privileges quiet staffers over mouthy associates. "He's a sociopath, but he's our sociopath," Marianne Gingrich quotes his staffers as saying, during the late 1990s when the House Ethics Committee investigated Gingrich's GOPAC's donations and his charity fundraising came under suspicion. Callista Bisek, Gingrich's current wife, became his mistress first and his wife second (really third, if one is counting wives), while Marianne was home visiting her mother. In 1999, Marianne had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Newt asked Callista to marry him before he and Marianne had agreed to divorce. The affair had been going on for years. Newt compared Marianne to a "Jaguar" and Callista to a "Chevrolet" and said he needed a Chevrolet, not a Jaguar, according to the Esquire story. In 2000 the couple wed.
Even so Gingrich continued to give speeches about family. "How do you give that speech and do what you are doing?" Marianne asked him. They were in the death throes of their relationship. "It doesn't matter what I do," he told her, according to the Esquire story. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I say. It doesn't matter what I live."
He recently converted to Catholicism and asked Marianne to agree to an annulment. "It has no meaning," Marianne Gingrich told Richardson. (Amy Sullivan, writing in Time magazine last year, noted that it might be a prep move for a 2012 bid, and also noted that Callista is a lifelong Catholic and sings in the choir.)
The former Mrs. Gingrich believes that Gingrich's do-what-I say, not what I do philosophy will be his undoing. "There's no way," she tells Richardson, of Gingrich becoming president. "He could have been president. But when you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don't like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new...you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way...He believes that what he says in public and how he lives doesn't have to be connected. If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president."
Richardson met with Gingrich in his Washington, D.C., K Steet offices. But all of his questions were met with the narrative that Gingrich always offers. His childhood, for example, was all "sugar pies" and "fabulous." (Richardson writes that Gingrich's mother was manic-depressive.) Gingrich says his conversion to Catholicism was for Bisek. "Callista and I kid that I'm four and she's five and therefore she gets to be in charge because the difference between four and five is a lot," he told Richardson, maintaining a cheerful, unruffled air throughout their interview. Marianne Gingrich says the line was hers, not her former husband's.
50%? I seriously doubt it is that. Either more, or less, but not equal generally.
Newt would be ripped without end by the MSM jackals should the GOP be foolish enough to nominate him. Look what they did to Sarah Palin when she personally had no issues. Newt is damaged goods and would like McCain be a weak candidate that would put Obama back in the White House.
Gingrich is poison. The Clintons learned about the Bisec affair in 1995 and successfully blackmailed him into pulling his punches on the Contract With America. He’s remained flipped ever since, as this picture shows. When it comes to AlGore and AGW he entered a “debate” where he admitted all the most important and debatable of Gore’s false premises from the very beginning, much like giving away the farm and negotiating to get the gate posts back. He’s consistently supported RINOs against the Tea Party candidates. If we want to reelect Obama, all we need to do is nominate this ethically compromised turd.
Do the Republicans really want to lose 2012 that badly? They seem to be trying for a repeat of the 1996 and 2008.
I agree, TomGuy. I don't see how Newt can possibly consider a run for the White House with this kind of baggage. The lib media will have a field day.
I've noticed lately in his appearances on Fox that he looks a bit more well-groomed and appears to have lost some weight. Plus he's been spending some time in places like Iowa and New Hampshire. Stay out of it, Newt!
Exactly, Nanny. I really hope Newt doesn't run for President in 2012, but I fear he will...
It really is a shame... Newt is a brilliant man, and visionary. I think he had better stick to giving speeches, writing books, etc. Running for POTUS will never fly with his baggage...
I’m thinking I’m done with Newt after reading this - twice he screwed over his wives - I’m not sure what he’s after but it’s not going to end up being POTUS.
Oh, I am sorry for your troubles. Please stay strong, and don't let that untrustworthy crapweasel anywhere near you. Sockmonkey
I used to be a big fan of Newt, writing off his abandonment of his first wife as a marriage made after a youthful indescretion. But the second abandonment really frosted me. He was definitely old enough to know better, particularly since all the chatter at the time was about Clinton and Lewinsky and every other woman who crossed his path.
Newt demonstrated his irresponsibility — irresponsibility to his wives, to his children, to the American people, and to the people of Georgia. I used to have a lovely gavel with his name on it that I displayed on my husband’s desk — a premium for giving him a large donation. I gave it to the Good Will.
Off with his head! (figuratively, of course)
I’m turned off by bubbly ideas, fake conservatives that can not execute effectively. Not as in bipartisan McCain reach across the isle effective, but government tear down effective. Across the isle, is my domestic enemy. The only reaching I like to see done is a punch or a choke.
I really like DeMint, Christie, even Palin.
I take media criticisms as a good sign, a good ‘tell’.
I am much better off without him. I just got a new bumper sticker that says "Cheaters never prosper, I got his house, his truck and his dogs!", LOL!
Hi Kiddo,
I have a gal that is a freind of ours that spent 30 years married to a doctor and got dumped and divorced.
On the wall or what is now her house in Grand Cayman is a sign that says:
“I’m a Great Housekeeper
Every Guy I Marry — I keep his House.”
“Jackie, was in the hospital recovering from treatments for uterine cancer. He hadn’t yet even asked her for a divorce.”
Who wrote this garbage?
Newt and his first wife had already agreed to a divorce BEFORE her cancer discovery.
To this day she is alive and doing fine.
Fa shizzle.
Gatun! Good to see you.
That was always the story I heard — that he slapped papers on her in the hospital. If untrue, somebody ought to have objected years ago.
The whole thing is so tawdry that it gives me the creeps. I think Newt is brilliant, but I cannot vote for him. (I said that about McCain too, and then I did.)
Come to think of it McCain had a similar episode — divorced the wife who waited patiently for his return because she was no longerthe “swimsuit” model that he had married and she’d been injured in an auto accident. The REagans were very upset about that and helped her find a job.
Aren’t there any decent men out there capable of leading this country?
10-4 Foul Ball!
Newt can go back and sit on the loveseat with Pelosi.
McCain and Newt are a lot alike in their hyper need for limelight, movement, unprincipled ‘flexibility’, even greed.
I don’t see what either bring that we can not easily get from a sea full of shallow, opportunity hacks, pols, lawyers and liars.
Might as well try a new face. Kind of like switching whores. Might as well try the next political strumpet.
Hey, afraidfortherepublic. I love hearing from you.
Here I am sitting at my window looking in the direction of Panama bay. Although the bay is about a mile from where I live, I can’t see it. (I can’t see the trees for the forest.) A huge thunderstorm is coming forward out of the Pacific toward me.
First of all, may I state I have no words in my vocabulary to describe my hatred toward McCain. The cheeky Kenyan bastard is another hate of mine. Therefore, McCain is not alone.
And no, no. I do not want Newt as president. Period.
Next, Sometime way back, there was an article on FR about Newt and his soon to be ex-wife and her cancer. I submit it was an article years after the fact. Therefore, I don’t know what is true and not true. Because I sometimes find myself in LaLa land hoping for the best, I would like to believe he was not that cruel toward his first wife as was McCain toward his first wife.
I admit I just don’t know.
And yes, the Reagans were totally insulted my McCain trashing and putting his wife aside. The difference between gigolos Kerry and McCain is that Kerry married a widowette but gigolo McCain divorced his wife to marry a very rich woman. No difference.
“Aren’t there any decent men out there capable of leading this country?”
A truly sickening question of which the answer is obvious. “NO.”
I agree. Actually, I did not know about the two different wives - I thought that there was only one wife before the current one - just one that was dumped. As you stated, as an adult he basically did the same thing again. He would be great in a cabinet post, but that’s it.
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