Home is Where the Dirt Is

Monday, May 16, 2011, 9:00 AM
Nathan Martin

Do you care what Newt and Mitch have hiding in their closets at home?

Should conservatives expect their candidates to be squeaky clean before running for office?

Take Newt Gingrich. Treating Newt as a serious 2012 Presidential Candidate for the GOP is a bit difficult. I don’t doubt the intelligence of the man, or his political savvy, or his ability to run a well-oiled campaign— it’s every bit of the moral fiber and character of Newton Leroy Gingrich that I just can’t swallow.

Old dirt, I know, but it’s hard to get past the record, both private and public. Gingrich’s personal life is a sad series of infidelity, deception and cold-hearted betrayal of any adherence to the sanctity of marriage or the value of truthfulness in personal commitments. The details and quotes from this profile in Esquire last September and interview with his second wife, of 18 years, Marianne Gingrich—the divorces, the wife with cancer and the affairs—still makes it difficult to believe that Gingrich believes he can charm the American people into giving him a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gingrich takes public solace in the fact that he has been “forgivenâ€