Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Gingrich's "Patriotic Affair"


"There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

That's how Newt Gingrich explained his extramarital affair with current wife Callista (then a House staffer) while Newt was Speaker to CBN's David Brody yesterday.

Some things just leave me almost speechless. I said almost, otherwise I wouldn't be blogging about this.

Saying "I'm so patriotic I cheated on my wife" just doesn't sit well with me...

On a side note, the above picture is taken from Gingrich's new exploratory committee website. Do you find it to look as creepy as I do?

6 comments:

  1. That is about the silliest thing I have heard anyone say in a long time. The man is almost certainly going to run for President and he is already making excuses for his past mistakes. The last thing we need is Newt Gingrich in the race. Sorry, but I do not trust him.

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  2. It looks like he stole John McCains wife Cindy McCain! ha

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  3. What I find creepy is the fact that you managed to summarize Gingich's comments in almost the same way that the AP did with it's initial headline "Gingrich: Love of Country Contributed to Affair."

    Based on the interview and the comment you extracted, it seems more factual to summarize Gingrich's comments as "I focused too much time and effort at the office and let things slide at home." I'm not condoning his actions, but please don't misinterpret his comments.

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  4. Nor do I!

    Bobbie McAuliffe
    Poteau

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  5. Larry and Bobbie, I'm with you. Without even taking into account his political problems (see Tom Coburn's Breach of Trust), I don't trust him.

    Anonymous: any similarity to the AP headline is purely coincidental. As far as Newt's statement, rather than just saying he did something wrong, he attempted to blame it on "how passionately [he] felt about this country." Another way of saying "passionate feeling about one's country" is "patriotism".

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  6. Jamison, you seem to be filtering Newt's comments and Anonymous's comments through your own biases of Newt. He did invoke his patriotism, but he did not directly corrolate his patriotism with his affair. I believe that what Newt was saying and what Anon was trying to say is that Newt spent a lot of time at the office. He's a workaholic and part of that was driven by his deep desire to fix things in this country. Unfortunately, all that time in the office meant that he didn't invest the time and effort at home to keep the family happy. Thus, the eventual dissolution of the marriage.

    It's the same thing that happens to lawyers who are passionate about justice or doctors who are passionate about the health of their patients or teachers who are passionate about education, etc. They start with very noble goals, but in the process, they lose sight of the fact that preserving their own home is vitally important and they end up trying to get their emotional needs met at the place where they spend all of their time - at work instead of at home with the spouse.

    So I agree with Anonymous on this one: Newt's actions were wrong, but let's not misconstrue his comments into something he didn't say.

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