From beginning (he married his former high school teacher) to end (he told her that he wanted to divorce her while she was being hospitalized for cancer) his first marriage was a mess for him. Months later, Newt remarried, but that marriage ended in a nasty divorce.
Tonight news comes out that Gingrich had an extramarital affair while leading the charge for impeachment against Bill Clinton. Yes, Clinton was impeached for perjury--a criminal offense, but the public remembers the scandal as the Monica Lewinksy affair, not as Perjury-gate.
And there's a precedent for piling on someone caught fooling around while the Monica scandal raged. While the Rev. Jesse Jackson was supposedly counseling Clinton to overcome his cheating ways, Jackson was himself having an extramarital affair--which led to the birth of an out-of-wedlock child. Thread after thread on conservative sites such as FreeRepublic were devoted to Jesse's hypocrisy.
After Gingrich abruptly resigned from the House in late 1998, his handpicked almost-successor, Bob Livingston, had to abandon his House seat because Hustler Magazine's Larry Flynt revealed that Livingston was involved in an extramarital affair.
Gingrich has told reporters that he's considering a presidential run. It probably won't happen, and if it does, he'll perform poorly. America is a forgiving nation, but often Americans draw the line at hypocrisy.
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2008 
elections 
Republicans 
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Gingrich 
Giuliani 
Jesse Jackson 
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