Righteous Indignation

And so it was that, exactly one year to the day when the next president of the United States will be inaugurated, we are being served a full portion of righteous indignation by one Newt Gingrich.

Perhaps with an eye toward this Sunday’s NFL conference championship games, Newt tapped into an old football axiom, that the best defense is a strong offense. He verbally exploded with righteous indignation during Thursday night’s South Carolina presidential primary debate, challenging CNN’s John King for repeating charges made by his second wife that Newt wanted an open marriage.

Why is it that “family values” has only a one-way meaning for conservative Republicans? Why do they decry the supposed lack of family values among Democratic politicians, tsk-tsking affairs by Gary Hart, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, et al, but turn a blind eye when one of their own transgresses? They ignore the fact that Ronald Reagan impregnated Nancy before saying “I Do.” They forget that while Gingrich and his GOP pals in Congress Henry Hyde and Bob Livingston were lambasting Clinton and calling for his impeachment, they were conducting their own extra marital affairs, six years running, by the way, in Newt’s case.

How does Callista, wife number three of the cherubic (let’s be nice and not call him portly) former speaker of the House, a reportedly devout Catholic who sings for pay in her church’s choir, jibe her faith with being a marriage buster, with engaging in pre-marital sex, and, since she was of child-bearing age back then, of having sexual relations not for pro-creation purposes? Since she’d become first lady if Newt were elected, these are not irrelevant questions given the raking over the coals Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton suffered when their husbands ran for office and were elected. The public looks to the president’s wife as a beacon of rectitude, not as a sexual predator. How could she or any Newt administration figure counsel abstinence, or integrity, or the sanctity of marriage when the hopeful commander-in-chief couldn’t keep his saber sheathed in front of another woman?

Gingrich’s response is that his past is his past. If it’s a problem for people, so be it, but he’s moved on. These personal failings, he believes, are not to be equated with policy failings by his opponents. Newt can flip-flop between beds, but Mitt Romney is not allowed to change his position from abortion rights to right-to-life.

Perhaps the best summation of Gingrich’s strength as a candidate and possible leader of the free world came from John Oliver of The Daily Show. Thursday night he said Gingrich would be the best person to negotiate with China. “Chinese culture is based on shame,” said Oliver, “and Newt Gingrich has none.”