In the great debate over Newt and his love life, people keep bringing up the case of Clinton.
I believe this to be a case of apples and oranges. Clinton was in trouble for suborning perjury in a civil rights case where he was the defendant. That was also about a blow job, of course. He insisted one of the workers at the DMV give him one and she turned him down and got fired because of that.
However during the clinton debate the Democrats kept going on and on about the blow job. Fundamentally, I think it squicked everyone out to the point they wanted the story over. Plus there was the whole april -december aspect of Monica's mental maturity and age. Normal people found the whole thing beyond disgusting.
Presidential philandering is not new. And where he sticks his wand can be a matter of national importance. John and Robert Kennedy both shared the same girlfriend with Sam Giacanna. This, had we be wiling to talk about it seriously at the time, would have been legitimate cause for concern. The face that James Buchanan was effectively the wife of Alabama Senator King also should have got a bit more scrutiny in the run up to the Civll war.
But over the years we have sort of thrown a blanket over Presidential private lives. For good or ill. President Cleveland's daughter Ruth was an issue in the campaign, but it did his opponents no good because he was busy discussing tariffs and the depredations of the railroads. He never did marry Ruth's mother.
The relationships between Roosevelt and Eleanor and whomever are a matter of titillation but no historical relevance. Eisenhower and Summersby is ignored again because it is pointless and squicky.
The fact that Nixon and Carter were uxorious did not make them good presidents. Pat Nixon's love for Dick didn't solve the Watergate issue, nor did Roselyn's affection for Jimmy reduce the inflation rate. Clinton's tomcatting didn't make him a failure.
So what does this have to do with Newt? The basic issues here are trust, intelligence, national security and economic recovery.
Newt's relations with women are at best reprehensible. If it were a matter of him vs someone equally intelligent and less of a cad I would gleefully go for the other option.
however, there is no drama that he was involved with Anna Chapman or any other honey pot involved with Russian or US mafias. He does have lots of really interesting ideas about the economy and the US's relations with the rest of the world that are worth listening to. (But his actual record vis a vis Israel and the Global Warming hoax show he also has pretty bad ideas as well)
So on balance, I have to say that given a choice between Romney and Romney care and Newt and his affection for all his weird baggage with PBS, Global Warming, playing footsie with various flaky arab regimes... I prefer Santorum. But Newt's conjugal craziness is not part of my decision tree.
Dear BM: Most people make decisions emotionally, and then scramble for justification behind their choices. Any excuse to rule someone out you don't like ANYWAY, any reason for forgiving someone you want to support, etc.
You can see by the inconsistencies that people are doing this.
In politics especially, I can name endless examples:
1. When people want to justify not letting government interfere and cross boundaries:
A. one group uses the ABORTION issue as the litmus test, the sacred cow you can't touch
B. one group uses the GUN issue as the platform to limit government controls
Very few people will defend BOTH issues on the same principles, but will only defend THEIR PET ISSUE while attacking people who do the same with the other!
2. Obama would push the health care bill as Constitutional by the letter of the law (since Congress legally passed it and he signed it) but it is totally off by the spirit of the law.
If you want to change Constitutional interpretation that much, it should be by CONSENSUS otherwise you are imposing legislation in an area where there are religious beliefs at stake (from abortion, to spiritual methods of healing that cannot be legislated by majority-rule, not to mention faith in free market solutions, that are indeed political and personal BELIEFS that can't be abridged or dictated by govt but must respect free will as through the private sector) Yet when it came to the immigration bill, he nixed that by the letter of the law, though "in spirit" there is nothing wrong with any citizen or state enforcing the same standards of federal government -- the bill was just written with flaws and this could have been corrected without canning the whole thing. So that shows inconsistency, and people ONLY going after THEIR PET ISSUES and not defending Constitutionality across the board for all issues.
3. With other religiously biased issues from gay marriage to the death penalty,
people will only push for THEIR beliefs to be defended by law,
but very few will push equally for OPPOSING beliefs to be EQUALLY defended
by the same Constitutional standards. That is why the conflicts go unresolved.
Once you can forgive people for doing this, then you will no longer be as upset but will come to expect and understand that this will happen.
It is still frustrating to see people "selectively" deny and forgive things in one instance, and then project blame in another, totally inconsistently while inciting others to complain who are doing the exact same thing from their side! Endless conflict in a vicious cycle...
The only way out of this self-induced loop is FORGIVENESS.
When people on both sides can admit and forgive that they are BOTH DOING THIS,
then maybe we can open up some honest dialogue and try to respect views on both sides.
Not attack one for the other, where both sides deadlock over and over.
People so silly. So sad!
