First I would like to say that I normally vote Republican in most national races. If a decent candidate is put forward during this election cycle, I see no problem in voting Republican again. But if the current front runner, Newt Gingrich, goes on to win the nomination; I doubt very seriously I would vote Republican. As a matter of fact, I would probably be forced to cast a vote to try and make sure this man never gets inside the oval office in any official capacity. It’s not that I have anything personally against Mr. Gingrich. He’s really not that different than most corrupt, career politicians who have lead our country in the past. But there are a few things about him that stand out to me.
If you don’t know a whole lot about Newt Gingrich, let me give you a brief rundown of the man who could end up leading our nation over the next four years. The ideas he seems to have about family values really bother me. His first marriage started out kind of strange. He fell in love with his high school geometry teacher. Now, that by itself isn’t all that strange. Young men often develop crushes on older women who are in positions of authority in their lives. Plus, from what I understand, she was very beautiful. But after he left high school and went on to college, this teacher followed him to Emory University. She was able to get a job there as a teacher also. Within a very short period of time, she and Newt were married. His family objected so strongly to the union that they actually boycotted the wedding. The marriage went on anyway and they had, what appeared to everyone, a fairly normal life.
But in 1980, Newt filed for divorce. He had been having an affair with another woman. Within six months of the divorce being final, Newt married again. This time to the young lady he had been having an affair with. They appeared to have a fairly normal life also. Then in 1999 Newt asked his second wife for a divorce. It appears like he was having an affair with another woman. Very soon after the divorce was final, he remarried. This time to the young woman he had been having an affair with.
Now I know you are probably sitting there scratching your head and thinking that you must have just read that wrong or that I had to have made a typo somehow. Well, neither one is true. You read that right and I didn’t make a typo. Newt Gingrich, the man who is running for President of the United States as a Republican, has a pattern of cheating on his wife. Now I always thought that Republicans stood for Family Values. I could have sworn that Newt Gingrich was a big part of trying to have Bill Clinton impeached for lying to congress about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Believing that, I had to go back and do a little checking on my own. What I came up with was that during the same time Newt Gingrich was publicly criticizing Bill Clinton for what he was doing; Newt was doing the same thing. The only difference was that no one asked Newt if he had sex with that woman. Well after finding this out, I decided to do a little bit more digging into Mr. Gingrich’s past. What I found out was that not only did he have an affair on his first wife. But the local First Baptist Church where they were living at the time of the divorce had to actually take up a collection for the Gingrich family. Jackie Battley Gingrich was left with two daughters and Newt refused to pay alimony or child support. When I read that, I knew it had to be wrong. I had always thought of Newt Gingrich in better terms than that. But I have my sources listed below if you want to check them out.
I also took a better look at his record while he was in office. I didn’t want to judge him simply from his personal life. I had been hearing about him taking $1.6 million from The Fannie Mae group on the news. I found out that that was true also. I already knew that he was the Speaker of the House when the U. S. government shut down in 1995-96. But I found out that it was actually the longest shutdown in history and also that it may have stemmed from some personal problems between Newt and President Clinton. Bill Clinton somehow snubbed Newt Gingrich during a trip to Israel by refusing to talk about the government shutdown. Then President Clinton possibly made Newt leave Air Force One by the rear exit. That all sounds crazy to me. It really doesn’t seem like a good reason to shut down the government. But he was criticized by his own party for this. Again, my sources are listed below if you want to look at them.
Also during Newt Gingrich’s term, he had 84 ethics charges filed against him. Most of them were eventually dropped, but he was sanctioned by the House of Representatives to the tune of $300,000. This was the first time in history that a Speaker had been disciplined for ethics violations. And just so you know it wasn’t a party witch hunt, the vote on the sanctions passed 395 for and 28 against. So with all of this looming over his head, I cannot see how America could possibly trust this man with the title of President of the United States. I know that I can’t.
Sources: Wikipedia.com “Newt Gingrich”,
U.S.News.com 2/23/2007 Monica M. Ekman “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Newt Gingrich”,
Salon.com 8/28/1998 Stephen Talbot “Newts Glass House”