Columnist – John Sammon
The response from Newt Gingrich to the question at the debate asking him if he asked his wife for an “open marriage,” in other words the right to cheat on her right under her nose with her permission, and the reaction of the crowd in South Carolina, was chilling if one is rational.
It was the roar of the mob.
It was also a standing ovation. The crowd might as well have been in the Sports Palace in Berlin in 1938 giving Nazi salutes. Newt went after a representative of the despised “Liberal Media.” The crowd of Southern, Ultra Right-Wing nut-jobs loved it, because they want hate, they want revenge. They didn’t listen to the candidate’s response soberly.
Instead, it was a shriek from the cave. Who ever said America is the land of the free?
CNN debate moderator John King asked Newt the question he has to ask as part of his job, because the personal character of the candidates’ private lives can be just as important as their job records. That is, once a figurative sleeping dog goes public like Newt’s ex-wife did.
You take that scrutiny on when you run for president.
If Obama’s wife publicly accused him of hitting her, it would become an issue.
Or does Newt think the press should favor him and ignore sexual affairs the way they used to do for John F. Kennedy? Bill Clinton and Gary Hart, both Democrats, suffered for their sexual peccadilloes. But that’s okay with conservatives. In fact, Newt himself personally supported charges of impeachment against Clinton for fooling around with an intern.
He sees no hypocrisy or double-standard in this.
When Newt called King’s question “disgusting,” his crowd of worshippers roared their approval. King might have felt he was about to be lynched. But he’s white.
Juan Williams, a conservative black commentator, was heckled by the mob in the same way and may have been more uneasy. He is black.
South Carolina after all is the state that fired the first shot in the Civil War, and where today the Confederate Stars and Bars flies at the State Capitol.
Both Newt and Adolf Hitler seem to have similar ideas about the role of women in their personal lives. Hitler rationalized that he was “too important” to marry any one woman, in this case Eva Braun, because he was instead symbolically married to the nation as a great man.
Newt told his wife that his mistress didn’t mind if he fooled around, so he obviously feels himself big and important enough to make himself available to any woman he chooses. Asking your wife for permission to cheat on her after taking vows in church to supposedly “love, honor and whatever,” for a candidate of the family-values-oriented Religious Right, is an interesting form of megalomania all its own.
Newt’s way of dealing with it, saying he admitted mistakes, is unlike Herman Cain, who steadfastly denied any wrong doing until an army of flummoxed women came out of the woodwork.
That still doesn’t absolve Newt of the need to answer tough questions about his private life if they become character issues because of public disclosures (complaining wife). Is it fair for Herman to suffer and not Newt?
In newly deciphered vintage footage of a silent film where linguistic experts studied Hitler’s mouth movements so they can tell what he was saying, they show he is telling his long-suffering mistress (Braun tried to commit suicide twice) at his mountaintop retreat, “all you have to worry about is that dress you wear. What if you had my responsibilities?”
Good ploy Adolf. In other words, I’m too important for any one woman.
Newt likewise complained to his wife, “You want me all to yourself.”
Is that bad? Is that wrong?
Isn’t that what marriage is? Isn’t that what you promise when you get married? I wouldn’t expect my wife to agree to such a deal. Is there one set of rules for you Newt, and another for me? Are promises not important? They become lies if they’re not kept.
Newt like Hitler was is a supreme egoist. He’s also a hypocrite, always referring to his humble middle class roots. Hitler too thought himself a man of the people.
Newt, the little butter-ball man with the double chin has tried not quite successfully in recent months to portray himself as more reasonable, but naked hate is always just underneath the surface waiting to spring out.
His followers, themselves haters, love him for it.
Any man who cheats on his wife will likely cheat the voters. Any man who has the unmitigated gall to ask his wife for permission to cheat, when cheating behind her back would at least spare her feelings of humiliation, is a ruthless man. These skeletons remain private until somebody complains publicly, and then voters have a right to know the kind of person they are electing. What’s fair for Clinton, Gary Hart and Herman Cain is also fair for Newt.
If Newt had behaved in an honorable manner and had nothing to hide, he should be able to answer such questions calmly in a dignified way without going ballistic.
His followers should also act reasonable. Newt’s tirade was instead a Freudian type slip, a rare moment of candor that demonstrates his inability to handle personal crisis.
If Newt admitted it was a mistake, why can’t he calmly repeat so at the debate? Why can’t his followers act like sane people? Newt can’t answer in a manner that is not enraged because there is no way he can logically explain and justify it. So, he flies into a rage and whips his mob of supporters into a frenzy.
The courageous one was King. Thanks John. The guy who retains control of himself is the brave one. It says so in the Bible. I read it.
No Matter. Newt’s followers don’t care. He represents their most cherished fantasies, “I’m a tough, no-nonsense guy who puts liberal commentators and everybody else we don’t like in their place.”
Newt revealed his real old snarling, hating self.
PLAYLIST: Newton Leroy ‘Newt’ Gingrich — Scam Artist Extraordinaire
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