Newt and the Social Conservatives (A twice-divorced candidate seeks Evangelical acceptance)

Three marriages. Two divorces. Add up the numbers, and Newt Gingrich is an improbable candidate to win over the influential social-conservative bloc in the GOP.

But in this unconventional cycle, both national and early-primary-state evangelical and social-conservative leaders are signaling that Gingrich’s personal history is no insurmountable obstacle, although some would like to see him further address his past decisions.

“In general, I think people who have experienced the ultimate form of forgiveness themselves are willing to extend mercy and extend forgiveness to others,” says Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

“In Newt’s case, he’s been very transparent and open about saying that he made mistakes in the past and that he’s found forgiveness and peace through faith in God,” Reed adds. “He’s got a strong marriage, and he’s close to his daughters and the rest of his family, and just based on what we’re seeing in Iowa and nationally, I think he addressed this, and I tend to think it’s a largely settled issue.”

Richard Land, director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, is more skeptical, saying that Gingrich’s candidacy will be a “hard sell” for many voters. Land has been doing informal focus groups among Southern Baptists for the past two years on Gingrich’s candidacy, as he expected Gingrich to run and be a serious contender. He found that women are especially wary of Gingrich.

“He’s got a gender problem,” Land says. “His toughest audience is going to be evangelical women. Evangelical men, depending on what Newt does and says, are more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt.” Women, on the other hand, have told Land that they would vote for Gingrich “under no circumstances.” If the general election comes down to Gingrich and Obama, they say, they may just not vote.

Land thinks Gingrich should “find a pro-family venue” and deliver a speech akin to John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech on Catholicism.

“He needs to make the speech of his life, and in his mind, his target has got to be 40- to 60-year-old evangelical women,” Land advises. “And he’s got to convince them that he’s sorry, he regrets it, he would do anything he could to undo the pain and the hurt that he’s caused, he understands the pain and the hurt that he’s caused, and he has learned his lesson. That he has thrown himself on the grace of Jesus, and that if they elect him president, he will not let them down — that there will be no moral scandal in a Gingrich White House.”

One key move Gingrich made in 2007 was doing an interview with influential social conservative James Dobson, then chairman of the board at the prominent evangelical organization Focus on the Family. Gingrich’s candid and contrite answers may have helped make significant inroads in reconciling social conservatives to him. Speaking about former misdeeds, Gingrich said, “I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I’m not only not proud of, but that I would deeply urge my children and grandchildren not to follow in my footsteps.”

“Somebody once said that when you’re young you want justice and that when you get older you want mercy,” Gingrich mused later in the interview. “I also believe that there are things in my own life that I have turned to God and have gotten on my knees and prayed about and sought God’s forgiveness.”

Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, praises Gingrich for being “very transparent” in that interview and for showing a willingness “to discuss some of the mistakes he’s made in his life.” Nance wasn’t the only one listening; many Iowans also likely tuned in, according to Bob Vander Plaats, Mike Huckabee’s 2008 Iowa campaign chairman and currently president of the social-conservative group The Family Leader, who extols Gingrich for being “very upfront, very transparent, very humble and repentful” in his conversation with Dobson.

Another advantage to Gingrich’s fessing up in 2007, Vander Plaats notes, is that it avoids the appearance of a sudden change of heart. “It wasn’t what I would call a presidential conversion. There are times when we talk about Paul having the ‘road to Damascus’ conversion. We sometimes in Iowa say some of these candidates have had a ‘road to Des Moines’ conversion,” he chuckles.

Unlike Land, Vander Plaats doesn’t think women are necessarily opposed to a Gingrich candidacy. “I really thought some of the soccer moms would really have an issue,” he muses. So when he heard that a soccer mom was supporting Gingrich, he asked her about it. “She put it in kind of a unique way,” Vander Plaats said of the woman’s answer. “She said, ‘I believe his childish ways are behind him.’”

This Saturday, Gingrich (along with the other presidential candidates, minus Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman) is slated to attend Vander Plaats’s forum, featuring Frank Luntz as moderator, which should give him another opportunity to make his case to Iowa social conservatives.

Ann Trimble-Ray, a Republican Central Committee county chairwoman in Iowa who considers herself socially conservative, thinks that Gingrich’s “past issues with marital infidelity” may have “kept folks from jumping on a Gingrich bandwagon.” But as Hawkeye voters have whipped through other candidates, a narrowing field has forced them to reconsider. Furthermore, while social conservatives want a candidate who has promised “to vote right” on the issues they care about, Trimble-Ray says, they also want someone who is “best positioned to go up against Barack Obama in the general election.”

In evangelical stronghold South Carolina, there is similar openness to Gingrich’s being the nominee. Oran P. Smith, president and CEO of the Palmetto Family Council, notes that most evangelicals have at some moment in their lives “turned away from their bad ways and moved forward toward a Christian worldview” and may thus be sympathetic to Gingrich’s journey.

“The way Newt Gingrich has handled his past, he has been very direct about the fact that he thought that his former ways were sinful ways, and I think generally, because of the experience of the average evangelical, evangelical Christians tend to be pretty quick to forgive,” Smith observes.

Nor does he see any need for Gingrich to deliberately address the matter again in a prominent way. Instead, he thinks that a low-key approach and a willingness to take questions on the topic will best serve Gingrich. “He doesn’t need to be doing any mea culpa press conferences, I don’t think. But when he is talking to private groups and informally, I think he needs to address it,” he says.

A boon for Gingrich is his daughter Jackie Gingrich Cushman’s decision to pen a column in May addressing the oft-repeated lie that Gingrich served her mother Jackie Battley Gingrich with divorce papers as she was dying of cancer. That, Cushman emphasized in her column, was not what happened. While Gingrich did take Cushman and her sister to the hospital to visit their mother, his first wife, after she had had a benign tumor removed in surgery, the divorce process had been initiated prior to the visit by Jackie Battley Gingrich (who is still alive).

Beyond his marital history, another potential sticking point for Gingrich when courting evangelical voters is his conversion to Catholicism two years ago. (Gingrich was previously Southern Baptist.) Land estimates that at most “a tiny sliver” of evangelicals, primarily older people, will reject Gingrich on that ground, noting that conversion hasn’t much dented evangelical support for former Florida governor Jeb Bush or current Kansas governor Sam Brownback, both Catholic converts from Protestant backgrounds. Smith agrees. “We have a heritage in South Carolina that’s mostly Protestant, clearly,” he says, “but I don’t really think most evangelicals when they are choosing who to vote for are thinking in those terms, to parse the differences between the professing Christian denominations.”

Ultimately, for Gingrich, the key to winning over dubious social conservatives is consistently showing both that he understands why his past troubles them and that he is no longer the man he used to be.

“Character counts and it should count, and we want to see leaders who have the right moral compass,” Concerned Women for America’s Nance reflects, but she notes that there is also “room for redemption.”

“It’s important for people to own their mistakes,” she adds, “and the more that Newt Gingrich does that, the better it will be for him.”

Maybe you need to brush up on your facts, provide some verifiable links, and, if you are a Christian, study up on the doctrine of forgiveness and Christ’s power to create NEW creatures in Him, when they come to Him. Hate stinks.

here’s a little something to think about, while you’re looking for some reputable links to verify your unfounded statements:

“Jackie Gingrich Cushman wrote a column in May of this year called “Setting the Record Straight” where she dealt with the myth of Newt Gingrich serving his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital with terminal cancer.

Here is the link:
http://townhall.com/columnists/jackiegingrichcushman/2011/05/08/setting_the_record_straight/page/full/

here are a few excerpts from her column:

-— “For years, I have thought about trying to correct the untrue accounts of this hospital visit… But I have always hesitated, as it was a private family matter and my mother is a very private person.”

-— “As for my parents’ divorce, I can remember when they told me.
It was the spring of 1980. My parents told my sister and me that they were getting a divorce as our family of four sat around the kitchen table of our ranch home.”

-— “Later that summer, Mom went to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for surgery to remove a tumor. While she was there, Dad took my sister and me to see her.

It is this visit that has turned into the infamous hospital visit about which many untruths have been told… here’s what happened:

My mother and father were already in the process of getting a divorce, which she requested.
Dad took my sister and me to the hospital to see our mother.
She had undergone surgery the day before to remove a tumor.
The tumor was benign.

-— As have many families, we have healed; we have moved on.
My mother and father are alive and well, and my sister and I are blessed to have a close relationship with them both.”

*****
This is just one of the many fabrications the media and Newt’s enemies have circulated over the years. I can’t imagine how many others there are. If you read the article, it was obviously difficult for Jackie to talk about this, but she did, because at some point you have take on the liars. If the Gingrich family has moved on from this event so many years ago, as Jackie states, maybe it’s time for everybody else to move on, also.

i LOVED your post, just wanted to add a few "footnotes"...

Matthew 6:14-15 NIV
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Matthew 18: 21-22 NIV
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, " Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? " Jesus answered, " I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

Numbers 14:19-20 NIV
In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now. The Lord replied, " I have forgiven them, as you asked."

John 8:7 NIV
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

Acts 7:59-60 NIV
While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.

Luke 17:3-4 NIV
So watch yourselves. " If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says , 'I repent,' forgive him."

Ephesians 4:32 ESV Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Colossians 3:13 ESV Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Proverbs 19:11 ESV Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

Matthew 18:32-35 ESV Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. (33) And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ (34) And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. (35) So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Colossians 2:13-14 ESV And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, (14) by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Romans 4:7-8 ESV “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; (8) blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Mark 11:25NLT “When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Colossians 3:13NLT “You must make allowance for each other's faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Hebrews 8:12NLT “I will forgive their wrongdoings, and I will never again remember their sins," says the Lord.”

Matthew 6:14-15NLT “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.“

Ephesians 4:32NLT “Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

Luke 6:37NLT “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.”

Matthew 6:12NLT “And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.”

Luke 18:9-14 NIV The Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector

⁹ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke 6:42 NIV “How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

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