Which one was this?
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.
Which one was this?
It would be very difficult to be the Supreme Leader, and expect people to trust in you, when your wive(s) never could.
Newt who ?
I certainly hope he does not run. It is interesting to note that Newt dumped his 1st 2 wives when they became ill. A psycholigist could have a field day with that.
I just wonder how he persuaded them to keep quiet for so long.
Newt’s biggest problem isn’t his ex-wife, its his mouth.
After the MSM finishes parading the trainload of baggage Gingrich has, he wouldn’t get as many electoral votes as John McCain got, and McCain lost by a 2-to-1 margin.
Do the Republicans really want to lose 2012 that badly? They seem to be trying for a repeat of the 1996 and 2008.
I swear I would vote for Obama before I would vote for Gingrich. The repubs better not let this happen.
Another promising guy who couldn’t keep it in his pants.
Let’s not forget next to McStupid*, Newt is nothing more than another poster boy RINO for the left;
Ever since he began licking Hillary’s boots for permission to remain public without being ridiculed, the left trot him out like their favorite son when they have very little to work with; and who knows where he stopped the licking and kowtowing with Clinton.
*aka: McChump, McNasty, Mcflipflop, McShame, McStupid, McJaun, McA$$, McCoward, McCorrupt, McAmnesty, McWorthless, McLiar, McIdiot, McRino, McWhore, Mcloser, McLame, McGeezer, Commander Flipflop, Commander McPetty
Here is another link with a picture of McChump:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2568779/posts
Nuke Gingrich,
Nobody has seriously been suggesting Newt Gingrich for President...however, the leftwing media must be afraid of him or they wouldn’t have dug this up. Interesting that they suddenly seem worried about his influence.
To say nothing of his past political positions.
Newt’s brilliant. He’d be a remarkably effective President most likely.
He’s BRILLIANT.
And utterly unelectable.
He’s not a commander. He’s a revolutionary.
As Che was to Fidel...Newt is to {insert name here}.
Should Jackie be on the "Bad Teachers List"? Poor Newt! A teen victim that ended up with a phobia for wives in poor health...
Did not realize that Newt was only 19 when he married his 26 year-old former teacher!!!! Before Mary Kay Letourneau? Who knew?
The second wife messed around with a married man & father of two daughters - she then married him. Didn’t she understand the concept of serial infidelity?
Would have given Newt a pass for emotional immaturity - but he was a father of TWO DAUGHTERS!!!!! That’s a deal breaker.
The driveby media will be pushing Newt as the Republican candidate just like they did McCain, because they know he will lose.
Exactly!
I lost faith in Newt when he didn't have a peep to say during the whole Clinton/Lewinsky Impeachment debacle. I commented to a friend that it was unusual for him to be so quiet. Then came the midterm elections in 1998 and the Republicans failed to make the anticipated gains and Newt resigns as Speaker after a few days, followed by resigning as the Congressman from Georgia a few weeks later.
What's up? I ask. Then comes the announcement of the divorce. Ah Ha! The big ol' hypocrite was didling a staffer, just like Clinton. No wonder he was so quiet.
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