According to the AP, Gingrich has admitted to having an affair during the Clinton impeachment.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against
President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.
"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."
Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.
There is nothing better than the sweet taste of Republican hypocrisy. Gingrich has provided many hypocrisy filled moments over the years. He led the calls for Jim Wright to step down based on an Ethics Committee finding of impropriety surrounding the bulk book purchases and speaking fees. Gingrich lost the Speaker's chair nine years later based on similar charges.
Sex seems to be his favorite flavor of hypocrisy. According to the Village Voice
If you believe Newt Gingrich's former mistress Anne Manning, the Speaker has for decades relied on the blowjob as the sex act with built-in plausible deniability. Referring to her first date in 1977 with Gingrich, Manning told Vanity Fair in 1995: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her."'
I believe the proper denial phrasing goes something like, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." Newt, a champion of Family Values, was kind enough to divorce his first wife under pleasant circumstances.
His first marriage, to his former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981. Although Gingrich has said he doesn't remember it, Battley has said Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery.
This latest revelation will sink his '08 hopes. We've already seen the right wing blasting Giulianiover his family affairs. It would be tough for them to condemn one and forgive the other. Tough, but not impossible. After all, Republicans are masters of hypocrisy.