Newt Gingrich and wife number three, Callista (Jeff Haynes/Reuters)
Tonight, ABC will be running an interview with Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne Gingrich. We all know that Newt cheated on her with the much-younger Callista at length before divorcing Marianne and marrying Callista after Marianne was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (not a minor detail when you consider that he divorced his first wife while she had cancer). So what could Marianne have that's worse than all of that publicly available and widely known information? She says there's something, and
Melinda Henneberger writes that:
The Gingrich campaign must be nervous, because it issued a preemptive statement from the candidate’s two daughters from his first marriage, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Gingrich Cushman: “Anyone who has had that experience,’’ the statement said, referring to divorce, “understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events.’’ A Gingrich aide prophylactically pinned the b-word on her, saying she was still “probably very bitter.”
Henneberger sifts through a 2010 interview Marianne did with Esquire, finding nothing very damaging to Newt. Yet if Marianne, ABC, and Newt all seem to think she might have something, what could it be? What would be firm enough to sound like something other than a "bitter" ex-wife, bad enough, and new enough to slow the Newtmentum?
ABC News is touting the claim that Newt asked Marianne for an "open marriage" so he could continue his relationship with Callista without divorcing as her "most provocative comments." If so, this will be a real fizzle.