The Nature of Things

It has been fascinating on many levels to watch the progress of the Republican presidential nominating process. For awhile, it was fun to speculate about who would be the new front runner of the week as they struggled to find someone - anyone - who was not Romney and who might have a possibility of destroying the hated Obama in the fall election. Now that the field has been winnowed down to, essentially, two more or less viable candidates, the whole thing has become a little less exciting and more predictable. Still, one thing continues to fascinate and amaze and that is the  level of support which Newt Gingrich has garnered among the righteously evangelical voters . This was, of course, particularly on display in South Carolina, where those who said that "family values" and social conservatism were the determining factors in their votes actually voted for a womanizing serial philanderer who has betrayed the marriage vows he made to at least two women. As for that third marri...

I never seriously thought that Newt Gingrich would actually run for president. I mean, why on earth would he put himself and his family through that? He has so many skeletons rattling around in his closet that it is really hard to even hear him speak above their sound. But I underestimated his hubris and his capacity for self-delusion. So, yes, he's running, but there is not a snowball's chance in hell that he will get the Republican nomination, because now he has gone and done the unthinkable: He has criticized the House Republicans' plan to kill Medicare , calling it "right-wing social engineering," and by implication he has criticized the new Republican god, Paul Ryan, and you just can't do that and be considered "serious" in his party. The party wasted no time in responding to his remarks on one of the Sunday television news talk shows. Republicans everywhere have been rushing to microphones to register their outrage at Newt. The leader of ...

Serial adulterer and perpetual hypocrite Newt Gingrich is making noises about possibly running for president again. I don't think he will. I don't think he even wants to really. I think he just wants the notoriety that comes from having his name mentioned as a possible candidate and the financial benefits that accrue to one who claims to be considering the race. But if he did run, it would be particularly ugly because all that nasty stuff about his sexual history would become a hot topic once again. Newt is on his third marriage and his method for finding new wives has been nothing if not consistent. He cheated on his first wife and divorced her while she was recovering from cancer surgery. He then married his mistress. He cheated on her with a young staffer as the second wife was being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He divorced her* and married his mistress who is now his third wife. So how does he justify all that? Well, you see, it was just because he is so pas...

Newt Gingrich gives sleazeballs a bad name. If there is any more hypocritical, narcissistic, arrogant, and completely un-self-aware individual on the public scene today, I don't want to know about him. Even Sarah Palin pales in comparison. I've known this and I guess most of the sentient world has known it since at least the 1990s, but it has just been confirmed for us again by his second wife . You remember his second wife, don't you? She was the woman that he was having an affair with while his first wife suffered from cancer. He asked that first wife for a divorce while she was in a hospital bed being treated for the disease. This behavior was occurring during the time that Gingrich was excoriating President Clinton for his affair with an intern and leading the charge for his impeachment over that affair. He was on the television news every night talking about "family values" and how important it was for political leaders to uphold them and be a moral e...

So it seems that Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, believes that two wars are just not enough for our military forces to contend with. He believes that we should also attack Iran and North Korea, the two remaining points on George Bush's "Axis of Evil". At least that is the message he gave to the American Enterprise Institute, the right-wing think tank, this week. He recommends this for a military that is already stretched thin, almost to the breaking point, a military that has seen many of its members serve multiple tours of duty in the war zones that are Iraq and Afghanistan. A military that is dealing with increased suicides from members stretched beyond the breaking point by the stresses of war. Of course, Mr. Gingrich has never been in a war, has never been in the military even. He is another of those chicken-hawk politicians who never saw fit to serve themselves but feel perfectly comfortable and happy sending other people's childr...