Messaging fail:

Also: the quote featured in the video from “historian” Newt Gingrich, where Andrew Jackson supposedly said we should handle our enemies by killing them was, um, not said by Andrew Jackson. It was said by Stonewall Jackson.

Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail.

[h/t Joe]

Following the news that Newt Gingrich asked for an “open marriage” with his second wife when she found out he had been carrying on an affair with his current wife, Callista, for six years, Dan Savage has this to say:

Technically you’re not asking your wife for an open marriage if you’ve already been f*cking another woman for six years. You’re presenting your wife with an ultimatum. That doesn’t make you a proponent of open marriage, Newt, it makes you a CPOS.

But Newt’s got a new campaign slogan: “Screw as I say, not as I screw.”

That sounds about right to me.

Brian Ross, ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent (and the journalist who broke the story of Truth Wins Out’s undercover hidden-camera investigation of the Bachmann clinic on national television), scored an interview with Marianne Gingrich, Newtie’s ex-wife number two. It’s scheduled to air tonight, but juicy tidbits are already leaking out, including this bombshell:

The reporter who conducted that interview, ABC Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, told WMAL’s Morning Majority program that Marianne Gingrich claims her ex-husband wanted an ‘open marriage.’ “He came to her and said, ‘I want to stay married to you and still have an affair with Callista, his current wife,” said Ross. “According to Marianne, he said ‘You need to share me,’ and she said ‘I don’t want to share,’ and the marriage ended,” he added.

That’s right — not only was Newt schtupping a staffer while sanctimoniously railing (and leading the impeachment charges) against President Bill Clinton for similar conduct, but once he could no longer conceal the affair, the Speaker had the temerity to demand that his wife “share” him with his mistress.

Unbelievable. And this is the man who’s trying to tell me I can’t have even one marriage? That HIS marriage has “sanctity” but MINE does not?!?

h/t: Joe

(Note: Ross misspoke in the quote above. At the time Marianne Gingrich alleges the conversation took place, she (Marianne), not Callista Bisek, was Newt Gingrich’s current wife.)

Newt Gingrich, who spent the better part of the 1990′s carrying on an extramarital affair, all while leading a witchhunt against the President for his own marital infidelities, considers himself an expert on choices, apparently. You see, just like you can casually choose to take advantage of your wife’s being in the hospital with cancer and shack up with the newer model, Newt believes that you can simply choose whether or not to be gay. Here he is speaking to the Des-Moines Register:

Q: Do you believe that people choose to be gay?

GINGRICH: I believe it’s a combination of genetics and environment. I think both are involved. I think people have many ranges of choices. Part of the question is, do you want a society which has a bias in one direction or another?

I’d prefer a bias in the direction of reality, Newtie.

Q: So people can then choose one way or another?

GINGRICH: I think people have a significant range of choice within a genetic pattern. I don’t believe in genetic determinism and I don’t think there is any great evidence of genetic determinism. There are propensities. Are you more likely to do this or more likely to do that? But that doesn’t mean it’s definitional.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in this country when this man is even being asked his “opinion” on the subject, much less having it printed in the newspaper.

Q: So a person can then choose to be straight?

GINGRICH: Look, people choose to be celibate. People choose many things in life. You know, there is a bias in favor of non-celibacy. It’s part of how the species recreates. And yet there is a substantial amount of people who choose celibacy as a religious vocation or for other reasons.

And then there are some people who choose celibacy, but yet end up diddling altar boys.

Here’s the video. It’s particularly gross how he starts talking about “values” at the beginning, since Newt Gingrich is probably one of the most obviously amoral politicians I’ve seen in my lifetime.

We know that the people who run the National Organization for Marriage are nothing if not flaming, dishonest hypocrites. That’s a given. But it’s a little bit rich to see Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage attending a fundraiser for Newt Gingrich, who abandoned his first wife while she was suffering from cancer to marry a newer model, and then started a years-long affair with Callista, while he was on a witch hunt against President Clinton, only to eventually leave Wife 2.0 and marry Callista, and the rest is history.

I mean, we know that the National Organization for Marriage doesn’t actually support anything beyond hatred for gays. I get that. But you’d think they’d see how bad this looks. Here’s what happened:

Last night NOM president Brian Brown attacked a Mother Jones reporter and shoved him out of the room as Occupy Wall Street protesters invaded a $1000/plate fundraiser for Newt Gingrich.

And here is that reporter talking to Keith Olbermann about the incident:

WOW.

I support this idea from GOProud’s Chris Barron wholeheartedly, as it would continue and amplify the sideshow of failure that is the GOP primary process, to the amusement of normal people everywhere:

I love Herman Cain. I have spoken with him at length and I believe he is a good and decent person. I believe he is someone who speaks from the heart, someone who hasn’t been a product of our broken political system and someone who brings decades of real world business experience to this race. For me, however, this race has always been about the message and not just the messenger – and none of these allegations, true or false, about Cain’s personal life change the message one iota.

[...]

Every other candidate in this race is just another politician. Nominating any of them would do nothing to fundamentally transform the GOP and do nothing to strengthen the GOP. Herman Cain’ s campaign remains the only hope for Tea Party conservatives to show that politics as usual is over in the GOP.

It’s funny because Herman Cain not only seems to be a serial adulterer, but also because he’s a really, really bad candidate who would lose gloriously to Barack Obama while shouting “9-9-9!”

So please, yes, Herman Cain, stay in the race, to make your wanna-be wingnut gay lover happy, and to amuse America.

We’ll close with these words from Roger Ailes [the good one]:

The fact that Herman Cain spent 13 years trying to “help someone financially” and failed to do so should tell you everything you need to know about the Cain Presidency. “The economy just might turn around beginning about five years after my second term.”

None of you love your country enough to deliver divorce papers to your cancer-ridden wife in the hospital, so that you can marry the new lady and then leave her when she gets sick, for the current lady:

Newt Gingrich: 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. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them.

That’s the kind of American dream story that probably brings a tear to a Boehner’s eye.

But this is the thing:

I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness. I do believe in a forgiving God. And I think most people, deep down in their hearts hope there’s a forgiving God.

Thank goodness conservative Christianity has so ingrained the Redemption Story into our collective American myth that patriotic politicians like Newt Gingrich can so easily call upon it to explain away LEAVING TWO SICK WIVES FOR NEW WOMEN. He’s washed his hands of it, given it to God, and if you can’t forgive him too, well then you’re just not a Christian Family Values American.

The Rude Pundit also points out that, in the very same interview, Newtie shared his feelings on the way that Judeo-Christian society [like the kind so ably represented by Newt Gingrich] is being viciously attacked:

“In a sense, our Judeo-Christian civilization is under attack from two fronts. On one front, you have a secular, atheist, elitism. And on the other front, you have radical Islamists. And both groups would like to eliminate our civilization if they could. For different reasons, but with equal passion.”

And you know how you can tell secular, atheist, elitist Muslims want to eliminate American civilization? By the way they don’t abandon their cancer-ridden wives, for the sake of the single-teared bald eagle.

What a joke.  Glad he’s running for president.

The only surprise is that it’s a woman, because you know the old axiom about dead girls and live boys:

WASHINGTON — Saying he “sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd, said Tuesday he will resign from Congress.

“I am so ashamed to have hurt those I love,” he said in a written statement. “I am so sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have fought so hard for me.”

(…)

“In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain,” he said. “I am resigning rather than to put my family through that painful, drawn-out process.”

He said his wife and children “were more than willing to stand here with me. We are a committed family. But the error is mine, and I should bear the responsibility.”

Of course, as a “Fam’ly val-yews” Republican Evangelical, as long as he goes and repents really nicely, it’ll all be okay, and then they’ll give him a certificate for a free small fry or McNuggets (his choice, for being such a good boy), and it’ll probably never dawn on him what a flaming hypocrite he is for daring to have this sort of voting record, via Joe Jervis:

Souder’s anti-gay voting record: NO on hate crimes (2009), NO on ENDA (2007), YES on constitutional ban on gay marriage (2006), YES on gay adoption ban (1999).

Souder in 2004: “I believe people can have a propensity to alcoholism. I believe they can have a propensity to look at pornography on [the] Internet. I believe they can have a propensity to be homosexual. But I believe that it’s wrong and it’s controllable. That is a fundamental, biblically based view that doesn’t leave a lot of room or comfortability in a society where they don’t want you to have absolutes.”

Awww, and now he got caught with his pants down, unable to stay faithful to his wife of thirty years. I guess he just has a “propensity” for sexytime with staffers when his wife isn’t looking. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: part of the patriarchal white Christian wingnut belief system is that the rules only apply to those they think they’re better than, but never to them. That’s part of why this happens with such hilarious frequency. Sure, he’ll apologize and resign, and then in a couple months, another prominent Republican will be caught screwing something he’s not married to.

So, here’s something else you should know about Mark Souder. He made a video in 2009 with his mistress, whose name is Tracy Jackson, about (get this) abstinence. Of course, my first thought when I saw this video was “Hands where we can see them, folks!”:

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Sexy.

I want to be fair and balanced here, of course, so here’s Jesus’ General’s defense of Souder:

The Lady Margaret Srivastav nee Gallagher hath penned a piece for TownHall Dot Com, wherein she hitteth the fainting couch over liaisons of an adulterous sort! She wantest not to jaileth those who cheateth on their chattel, but would like the government please to doeth more to discourage this!

Anyway, it’s stupid, and it’s just more of Maggie Gallagher’s moralistic crap, so read it if you must, but I simply had to bring you this fabulous quote from Thers at Whiskey Fire, in reaction to the piece specifically, but more broadly in response to the entire conservative worldview which inspires hateful toads of perpetual scorn like Maggie. It has The Potty Language in it, so I put it below the fold, so if you have a problem with The Potty Language, don’t click the clicky, but this quote is really too good to hide under a bushel. First off, here’s the Gallagher phlegm to which Thers is responding:

I do not want to pin a scarlet “A” on the breast of every man or woman who has sinned. I want something much more modest. I want people who commit this moral trespass to have the decency not to attempt to profit from it in the national media.

Here’s what I’m guessing: We have some of the tools right now to stop it, if we wanted to use them. Some of the men hooking up through Web sites that advertise adultery probably live in states where adultery is still technically against the law, or where torts of criminal conversation or alienation of affection exist. An injured spouse or an aggressive state attorney general could make a case out of this.

But we could also update these older torts of adultery with new language that makes explicit that commercial enterprises that intentionally and explicitly attempt to profit from acts of adultery expose themselves to lawsuits by the injured wife and children. For that matter, why isn’t commercially soliciting for adultery as much of a crime as soliciting for prostitution?

And here is Thers’ response:

(Read More)