Newt Gingrich, or the Triumph of Hypocrisy

Newt Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina primary speaks volumes about the state of moral decay and hypocrisy of the group who ensured the ex-Speaker of the House’s victory. Newt Gingrich won the primary with the votes of religious fundamentalists, the tea party and those who identify as “very conservative.” This was a victory (which will only be a little blip) that caused a great deal of discomfort.

How can anyone claim to be a religious fundamentalist or “very conservative” — that is, if the words still mean anything to those who follow the principles of the Old Testament — and vote for a twice-divorced man who has a serious and well-documented history of adultery (“Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife”), a man who wanted the president of the United States’ head for an affair with a White House intern while he himself was having an extramarital affair, a man who announced that he wanted a divorce over the telephone (note the man’s courage) to his wife, who was, at the time, receiving care at a hospital after learning that she was suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (note Newt’s class)? He cut his first wife loose while she was battling cancer. It’s a nauseating story. And can anyone, for a single nanosecond, imagine that such a man could be elected president of the United States? One doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Not a single one of his former colleagues or collaborators takes Newt, the Nobel Prize winner for pomposity, seriously. The man wants to reduce government but sees no inconsistency in asking for $1.6 million in fees from Freddie Mae, the group that guaranteed dicey mortgages and escaped the need to declare bankruptcy thanks to the federal government’s bailout.

Even better: The serial adulterer wants to protect the “sanctity of marriage” by opposing gay marriage.

In order to understand Newt’s victory, we don’t need election specialists but, rather, an army of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. The success of the least qualified of the Republicans is a sign of profound personality disorder. Within a week, the Florida primary will tell us if the disorder affects all the southern states or just the lovely state of South Carolina, which still has not ceased flying the Confederate flag from the summit of its capital building.