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.
A remarkably effective president with what, implementing cap’n’trade?
Bull.
That fat pudge ball doesn’t have the stones to overthrow a Thursday’s meeting of a Ladies Flower Club.
McCain without the POW creds. No thanks.
Right on! That is why I would never ever ever trust Newt - what he did after the Repubs gained the Congress in 1994 was a crime. Just read Tom Coburn’s “Breach of Trust.” Newt is smart, but he is 100% a collaborator with the enemy.
It doesn’t help our side when we have idiots like Sean Hannity sucking up to RINO’s like this, unwilling to ask him the “hard” questions!
Doubt me? Watch Hannity when he interviews the RINO Kings like McCain, Huckabee (sp), Newt, or Romney. Ever seen him challenge McCain in any meaningful way on McCain’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform Stand (Amnesty)? I haven’t! He’s too buddy, buddy with these RINOs!
*
Here we go again! Dole, McCain, now Newt? LOL!! Yeah MSM, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me a third time? Whaaat, ya think I’m completely stupid? Fuggetboutit!
Oh, I agree completely, he’s been WAAAAY too malleable since he left Congress. He’s a TV star now. Which is another reason why I say unelectable. The right doesn’t trust him.
When I think of him I still think of the guy who drove the Contract...that’s why I said “Che.”
The Contract is another reason he’s unelectable. The left still hates him.
Have we forgotten? CHARACTER COUNTS.
My personal rejection of Newt as anything but a good speaker/writer is his treatment of Clnton. He used to say that when he was in Clinton's presence, he was charmed into giving into the Clinton charisma and could not hold firm to the convictions he went there with.
There is really something to ponder on that sociopath thing and his dropping of wives when they really need his support. When his support, which he vowed in the marriage lines, is needed, Newt fades and disappeaars.
Newt for President?-- NO! NOT! NEVER!
vaudine
Rough childhood, mentally ill mom. Left mom and married woman just a couple years younger than the mentally ill mom. Sticks with her until she becomes ill. Picks another one. And so on.
Newt has his own mental issues, I believe; we don't need or want him leading anything, IMO.
I think even in Congress he just ran to the head of a movement, a moment in time, and claimed it as his own, and said the crowd was following him.
This is kind of proven in that he blew it after the contract, which if it was part of his genius, how come he became so stupid afterward?
Then he runs to Hillary for HillaryCare when he thought that socialist, leftist, big government act was going to be the next big thing.
The guy is rootless. Personally, politically, philosophically except to keep his ego in the burning lime lite. He is a white Al Sharpton.
The worst story about Newt is the one about how he sold Conservatives down the river.
Newt is a creep. I wish Hannity would stop promoting him on a his radio show. Sean show is almost unlistenable anymore.
None of this matters unless we allow the Left to pick for our side a straw man candidate for President.
I think he’s a non-entity. And he difinitely would be if Hannity would stop giving him a microphone.
That’s another way in which your Sharpton comparison fits.
None of this matters unless we allow the Left to pick for our side a straw man candidate for President.
I think he’s a non-entity. And he definitely would be if Hannity would stop giving him a microphone.
That’s another way in which your Sharpton comparison fits.
i hope he does not run - we need to get behind one, strong, electable and truly conservative candidate. the alternative of four more years of obama and the wookie is simply terrifying!
Newt has two problems: His past personal history and his looks.
You can’t deny that a lot of people vote for someone who “looks like a President”. No matter how smart you are that is a hurdle that most wannabe Presidents simply can’t overcome.
In politics, as in the corporate world, size matters ie. a commanding presence. And a handsome face will usually win out over an ugly or average mug.
Newt should stay out of the race and concentrate on being available for an important advisory post where his intelligence will be sorely needed. He is a great ‘idea’ man and should recognize his strengths and limitations.
Newt has two problems: His past personal history and his looks.
You can’t deny that a lot of people vote for someone who “looks like a President”. No matter how smart you are that is a hurdle that most wannabe Presidents simply can’t overcome.
In politics, as in the corporate world, size matters ie. a commanding presence. And a handsome face will usually win out over an ugly or average mug.
Newt should stay out of the race and concentrate on being available for an important advisory post where his intelligence will be sorely needed. He is a great ‘idea’ man and should recognize his strengths and limitations.
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