At last night’s SC Republican presidential debate, CNN’s John King put the cherry on top of a triple-scoop-sundae-with-everything media feeding frenzy that completely missed the point of the real story.
The real story isn’t that Newt Gingrich has a bitter ex-wife trying to torpedo his presidential aspirations because he replaced her with a younger, cuter, more adoring model. The real story is that Newt’s closest and most important political adviser in his unlikely rise from minority backbencher to Speaker of the House is horrified at what might happen to the country if he were elected president. (And make no mistake: with unemployment above 8% for the past 3 years, any Republican nominee stands a good chance of winning November’s election.)
John Richardson first broke this story back in 2010, with a nuanced and insightful in-depth profile of Marianne Gingrich (wife #2) the pages of Esquire. As Richardson pointed out yesterday on Esquire’s (excellent) political blog, “The real story isn’t that Gingrich committed adultery — an act every bit as offensive as sodomy to the actual Bible, if not to modern Christians — over and over and over again. The real story is that Newt Gingrich is so deeply conflicted and strange, so erratic and unreliable, so scheming and secretive, that he’s way too much like a character out of Dostoevsky than a politician should ever be.”
If Marianne Gingrich had wanted to destroy her ex-husband politically, she’d be on a book tour right now, selling her tell-all insider’s tale of Newt’s rise to power, and his utter incompetence at wielding it. Instead, she looks more like someone speaking up–with great reluctance and at some personal cost–to preserve the Republic from the damage a manic megalomaniac would cause if he entered the White House next January. Too bad most of the political media hasn’t seen fit to notice.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
