Sayonara, Newt
John Hinderaker
The enduring appeal of Newt Gingrich, not as a thinker or tactician but as a candidate, mystifies me. In Get Out a Cross and a Clove of Garlic, which was mainly about Al Gore, I wrote:
I was talking to a reporter the other day about Republican Presidential candidates; Newt Gingrich's name came up, and I said that whenever anyone suggests Newt as a contender, I get out a cross and a clove of garlic. I love Newt, but the idea of bringing him back, dragging along all of the baggage that caused him to be driven from the House leadership with an approval rating about equal to Mark Foley's, is crazy.
This is just one example of the kind of baggage I was talking about: Gingrich admits affair during Clinton impeachment probe. Liberals all over the web are going crazy over Newt's admission--not that it was a surprise to anyone--and I don't blame them.
Checking His Baggage At The Door
Ed Morrissey
One of the most effective strategies for defusing potentially damaging information is to have the person it damages release it early, before his opponents have the chance. It works equally well in litigation as well as in politics, if it gets out very early. Newt Gingrich knows this full well, and yesterday employed the strategy in dealing with a messy chapter in his own life:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.
"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."
Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity. ...
Gingrich, like Rudy Giuliani, has had two divorces and three marriages. John McCain has been divorced once. Only Mitt Romney, alone among GOP frontrunners, has remained married to the same woman. This contrasts sharply with the Democratic leaders in the 2008 race; neither Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, nor John Edwards have had a divorce.
Politically, Gingrich made the right move. His peccadilloes already have had wide exposure, but not in the context of a national race. He wants to ask forgiveness up front for his mistakes, and evangelical Christians will feel compelled to grant it. It's the NCAA football strategy; take a loss up early in the season and one can still win the national championship, but the same loss late will almost certainly spell the end of any hopes of winning the big prize.
The charges of hypocrisy will not go away as easily. ...
Politics of Personal Morality…
Jules Crittenden
… cut in all directions. Gingrich comes clean about a extramarital affair while pushing for Clinton’s impeachment and will take hits for hypocrisy. Old news he’s getting out of the way ahead of a potential run. Clinton had problems with extramarital affairs, but his big problem was his excessive interest in junior subordinates, the fact that the sordidness was all coming out as he was leader of the free world, and the straight-faced, lip-biting lying to investigators and the American people, the lawsuits, etc. Gingrich may run into some of the same problems, seeing as the woman in question was a 33-year-old congressional aide and he was a morally righteous House Speaker at the time. The left already hates him, and anyone on the right who might look askance at moral failings, well, he’s trying to soften that blow with a little lip-biting of his own. ...
