Sure, I'll promise whatever you want.
Can I have Air Force One now?
(Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons)
It's the season for silliness. Actually, let me rephrase that: It's
always the season for silliness, nowadays. Despite decades of warnings from scientists, we failed to implement silliness offsets or investigate the possibilities for silliness sequestration, and now we're past the tipping point, where everything will be silly all the time, every day, from now on. Congratulations, we've doomed our children to living in a world of inanity.
So now it's the season for slightly more silliness in what is already a stormfront of extreme ridiculousness in a planet being suffocated by an atmosphere of asininity. This particular blast of hot air comes in the form of (who else?) Newt Gingrich, unfrozen caveman candidate, who has decided that the thing he needs to push him over the top is to do what he's done in all his marriages up to now, which is to lie his ass off.
Remember the Family Leader's "marriage pledge" that they were trying to get candidates to sign off on, earlier this year? The one that demanded candidates vow to "protect marriage" by promising to do as many discriminatory and theocratic things as possible, all while promising (cough) to be faithful (cough cough) in their own marriages? Well, Newt declined to sign on before, but no more!
Gingrich has answered the pledge with a lengthy written response, vowing to support a federal marriage amendment, reinstate the Mexico City policy -- and, per the stipulations of The Family Leader pledge, to be faithful to his wife:
I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.
I would pay good money to find out what each of Newt Gingrich's ex-wives think a Newt Gingrich "fidelity pledge" is worth. (For that matter, we should ask the current Mrs. Gingrich, who was the woman Newt cheated on his last wife with.) I also wonder what gave Newt more pause, the pledge to fight for the Defense of Marriage Act, the pledge to reinstate discriminations against gay military members, the pledge to defund Planned Parenthood, the pledge to prevent taxpayer dollars from being used for abortions in other countries, the pledge to make sure nonmarried people are appropriately screwed by the tax code, the pledge fiddle with the Constitution, the pledge to reduce the deficit in the name of family values(!), the pledge to protect religious freedom to discriminate, the pledge to pack the courts, or the pledge to not hump people who are not his wife.
All of those pledges are contained in the "marriage pledge," but it's telling, in Newt's case, that it's the no-buggery one that bystanders are raising their eyebrows over. Sure, we believe you'd introduce a Constitutional amendment to allow greater discrimination against gay Americans, but you'd really stop having affairs? Really? Even after you blamed your past affairs on your extreme, uncontrollable patriotism?
Oh my.
When other candidates signed their little blood oaths to this all-encompassing pact of religious doggerel, we were suitably outraged. It is, after all, a pledge to implement discrimination and religious prejudice, which is about as contrary to supposed "American values" as you can get. It demands a wide variety of theocratic acts, which would make people shudder if we crossed out "marriage pledge" and put "my promise to implement sharia 'n stuff" up there, but "family values" conservatives are typically excessively dull people and do not grasp these things. No, that is not an insult. Just an observation.
Newt signing this pledge, however, is resulting in less outrage and more derision. For starters, a pledge from Newt Gingrich is worth exactly nothing; a pledge from Newt Gingrich about Newt Gingrich not having affairs is worth less than nothing. I don't think anyone is under the illusion that Newt considers any of the rest of this pledge to be binding, either. Newt may be a lot of things (except for a lobbyist—he makes that very clear, for various awkward legal reasons), but consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and Newt considers himself a full-on genius of legendary proportion. He's just signing it because the rubes want him to. Later on, if there's a part of it he doesn't like, whether it be the part about DOMA or the part about not committing adultery in the front seat of a luxury car, he'll just declare that his own patriotism renders it null and void, and call you an idiot of you can't grasp it. Oh, and call any reporter who reports it an idiot too, because reporters who report what Newt has done, rather than what Newt has said, are universally regarded by him as not worthy of his genius.
And so, Newt signs a crazy right-wing pledge, as is expected of him and all the other crazy far-right candidates seeking to win the far-right nomination of their far-right party via their far-right base. Then, during the general election, we will all get to hear the long, roundabout excuses as to why the batshit crazy far-right pledge was in fact not far-right or batshit crazy, and you can totally trust the far-right candidate to be moderate and not at all far-right anymore, because that was then, this is now, reporters are stupid, and also freedom and such.
He'll even pledge that to you, if you want.