Although I'm hearing many Republicans on TV say that their latest darling, Newt Gingrich, doesn't have to worry about his past indiscretions, I disagree. People know a little about his past wives and the extra-marital affairs that he had, but when they are reminded of the sordid details along with the fact that he is the only speaker to have been disciplined by the House since its existence, I think it will sentence him to the same rapid downfall that Bachmann, Perry and Caine suffered from. He is a morally and ethically weak individual who should not even be considered as a candidate.
Gingrich met his first wife Jackie Battley while in high school. She was his high school geometry teacher. He married her at 19 while he was attending college. Their marriage blew apart when Jackie accused Newt of having an affair with Marianne Ginther, a personnel clerk for the Secret Service. Jackie was battling cancer at the time, and there are reports that Newt pressed her about the divorce details while she was recuperating from the removal of a uterine tumor (which proved to be benign). Newt is reported to have said of Jackie "She isn't young enough or pretty enough to be the President's wife". Newt and Jackie divorced in February of 1981, and six months later Newt married Marianne. Marianne and Newt seperated in 1987, and got back together in 1993. However, he had been having an affair with Calista Bisek, a congressional staffer, since the mid-1990's. Marianne was diagnosed with MS during this time. In 1999, while Marianne was visiting her mother, Gincrich called her and shocked her by asking for a divorce. Soon after, he gave her another jolt by confessing that he had been having an affair with Calista Bisek. Newt married Calista in August of 2000 - she was 34, he was 57. An interesting twist on the whole series of extramarital affairs was that he publicly flagellated Bill Clinton while he was secretly having the affair with Bisek, which makes him a hypocrite as well as a philanderer.
In 1995 a House Ethics Committee reprimanded Gingrich for having improper business dealing with Rupert Murdoch. He had signed a 4.1 million dollar book deal with Murdoch's Harper/Collins press while there was pending legislation in FCA matters that directly affected Fox Broadcasting Company. Later in 1997 Newt underwent an investigation by the House Ethics Committee again. There was questionable activity surrounding the use of funds from two tax exempt 501c (3) organizations, the Abraham Lincoln Foundation and the Progress and Freedom Foundation to pay for a college course that he was teaching. The committee fined him $300,000 for violating House rules barring use of tax-exempt foundations for political purposes and lying to the committee.
Nancy Pelosi recently brought his ethics violations back up, since she had served on the Ethics Committee. Gingrich has tried to make it look as if the whole matter was a partisan driven matter, a "Pelosi driven effort". This is untrue - and in fact, the committee was evenly divided by party, and Polosi was only a junior senator at the time.
Americans do not want a person of low moral and ethical character to be President. I think that utlimately Republicans will reject Newt because of his moral and ethical shortcomings, just as they rejected Herman Caine.
