Can This Vile Man Be A Serious Presidential Candidate ?

The Republicans have some pretty pathetic people that are considering a run for the party's presidential nomination. But while I have serious questions about many of these potential candidates (like Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann), none is as vile and immoral as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He has made a career of saying one thing in public and living another way in his private life.

Gingrich, who today is viewed as the ultimate right-wing conservative, actually started his career as a liberal -- a supporter of liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller. But after being defeated for a House seat in a conservative Georgia district, he changed his political stripes. After all, to Newt getting elected was far more important than political beliefs. But that was just the start of his questionable ethical behavior.

After being elected to the House of Representatives, Gingrich betrayed his wife Jackie by having an affair with another woman. He compounded this betrayal by asking his wife for a divorce when she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. Six months later he married his second wife Marianne -- the woman he had the affair with.

That would have been enough to ruin the career of many politicians, but Republicans are evidently different. They only condemn this kind of behavior when it is done by a Democrat. Gingrich not only kept his House seat, but was later elected to the Speaker's position by his fellow Republican House members.

And Gingrich continued his hypocritical and immoral behavior while Speaker. At the same time he publicly blasted President Clinton for receiving oral sex from a White House staffer, Gingrich was carrying on another extra-marital affair -- this time with a House staffer named Callista. Obviously it was fine for him to do the same thing he was denigrating the president for doing.

Then Gingrich again showed his moral weakness by asking his wife Marianne for a divorce after learning she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It obviously has never occurred to him that a decent person would stand by their spouse in their time of need -- not abandon her. And he did this with both his first and second wives.

During his term as Speaker Gingrich was charged with 84 different ethics violations. Of these, he was only convicted of one -- lying to the committee. The House voted 395 to 28 to reprimand Gingrich and fine him $300,000 for the violation. A little over a year later, he gave up trying to defend his speakership. He resigned as Speaker and gave up his House seat.

Now this deeply flawed politician was to be president of the United States (and will probably be the first Republican to declare his candidacy). He is currently busy trying to patch things up with the fundamentalist right-wing in the Republican Party. In a recent interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network, he admitted his affair and blamed it on his being to passionate about America and working too hard for it.

And it looks like the fundies may be falling for that pathetic excuse, especially since it has been revealed that's he's putting a lot of his PAC money into supporting their hate agenda. After the Iowa Supreme court outlawed Marriage discrimination against gays/lesbians in that state, some right wing hate groups targeted three of those justices and were successful in ousting them from the Court. Gingrich donated $350,000 to a couple of those groups to help them in their campaign against the justices -- proving that he doesn't support equality for all Americans.

One of the groups he funded was the American Family Association (AFA), which has officially been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Think Progress reports that "the AFA is known for making incendiary comments about gays, including blaming gays for crop failures and various other biblical plagues, claiming that Hitler was gay, saying lesbians can't be justices, equating gay sex with domestic terrorism, and equating gay sex to heroin, just to cite a few examples."

It has become obvious that the concept of morality and/or ethics is totally foreign to this vile man -- unless hate can be considered a moral value. Gingrich will say or do anything to get what he wants, and currently he wants to be president. Can Republicans overlook all his many flaws and actually nominate this man? Many pundits believe it is possible. And that says a lot about the current state of the Republican Party.