Gingrich under fire because he is a conservative?

Joe Guarino suffocates thinking with preconceived suspicion and concludes that the reason the national press is covering the marital history of of a contending presidential candidate while the local press did not cover the marital troubles of a mayoral candidate is because Newt Gingrich is a more conservative Republican than the moderate Republican mayoral candidate. It's the conservatism that brings the scrutiny, he says. In Joe's mind, "it is painfully obvious."

Incorporate the facts though, and Guarino's conspiracy theory crumbles. The local media did not choose to report on the marital histories of ANY council candidate, including those of conservative Republicans. They did not apply a double standard, one for moderates and one for conservatives, they applied the same standard to all candidates, from the most conservative to the most liberal. I don't know why the local press didn't report on the marital histories of council candidates, it could have been because marriage laws are not an issue for city council, but different standards for conservatives and moderates was demonstrably not their reason.

The reason Gingrich gets legitimate scrutiny on this issue is this: Conservatives, all the Republican presidential candidates* and Newt Gingrich specifically, have pledged to refuse to allow marriage for gay people—that discrimination being necessary, they say, in order to "defend marriage."

If the implication is not obvious to you, here it is: If a candidate cannot keep their personal obligation under a marriage, cannot manage a marriage within their personal domain (or if they themselves are privately gay), they really have no businesses dictating, especially not through the power of law, that this institution is too sacred for the participation of consenting gay adults. Their rhetoric is contrary to their actions—hypocrisy. How qualified is a man who destroyed his own marriages to tell other people how to live theirs? Voters deserve to know if a candidate's public statements contradict their actions.


As Think Progress notices, Gingrich has a special place at the apex of hypocrisy on this matter. He doesn't just want gay marriage denied to a segment of loving, committed, consenting adults, he promises, through legislative action, to "defend" marriage as specifically and exclusively between one woman and one man—this while having asked his wife to share him with another other woman. Gingrich cannot keep his own marriage to one man and one woman, but he wants to legally impose that demand on others. It wasn't as if Gingrich's marriage went kaput because of unhappy circumstances either—not as if he was innocently a victim in some unavoidable disintegration of his marriage—it was his actions that brought down the one marriage he had the complete ability to "defend." Destroying his own marriage, he now he wants to control others'.

One of the reason I have thought since last fall that Gingrich would be a contender in this race is because he has vast political experience and the intellectual confidence to think on his feet. Demonstrating those qualities, he is turning this matter back on the media and it seems to be working—at least with the Republican crowd at last night's debate (it won't in a general election)—but for Guraino to proclaim that sinister motives explain the distinction between national media reporting of Gingrich's philandering and local media ignoring the marital travails of local city council candidates is to turn a blind eye to Gingrich's hypocrisy. Local candidates were not saying one thing and doing another and especially not while defending odoriferous discrimination. Gingrich is.

[* Ron Paul cuts a slightly different path, but clearly does not favor marriage equality for gay people.]