Heaneyland!

Everything Newt is new again

Hey! There's an AP article today about how Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair (with congressional aide Callista Bisek, now Gingrich's third wife) during that whole Monica Lewinsky nonsense.

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

"Is it wrong of me to hold everyone to a standard that's higher than I'm actually able to uphold? You think it is? Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that."

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity. "The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge."

"I didn't lie under oath about it, so I still have the moral high ground." But it's kind of not parallel, since he never had the chance to lie about it under oath! I'm sure he would've jumped at the chance. Anyone remember Anne Manning?

"We had oral sex," Manning revealed. "He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" She added that Gingrich threatened her: "If you ever tell anybody about this, I'll say you're lying."

Ah, it's kind of fun to relive my outrage at the incredible amount of skeeve caked all over Newt. The Notes on a Scandal-like affair with his high school geometry teacher! The divorce discussion at her hospital bedside as she was recovering from cancer surgery! Oldies but goodies all.

Actually, now that I'm looking at Salon, it appears that this story was covered in 1999, which begs the question as to why AP is acting like this is new information (although I, for one, seem to have missed it the first time around, or forgotten it when Gingrich drifted out of the public eye). Perhaps he's planning a presidential run and is getting all the mea culpas out of the way early.

Also of note, the terrible sentence construction in the first paragraph of the article:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

He acknowledged that he acknowledged it? Let no one say henceforward that politicians equivocate.

Posted by Francis at 01:32 AM