The top 3 Republican presidential candidates and their wives are now responsible for 21 marriages

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/quicktakes/313076,CST-NWS-qt26.article

News Item: "Rudy Giuliani said yesterday he wasn't surprised by his wife's admission of a secret third marriage. . . ."

Time to get out the calculator again.

Taking into account all the wives, along with all the husbands of all the wives, the top three Republican presidential candidates and their wives are now responsible for . . . 21 marriages.

Family Values can be very hectic.

[NNN0LHI]

1. I think I am starting to figure out this family values stuff

Having family values must mean having a lot of families. Yea, thats the ticket.

Don

[gatorboy]

3. Well, there IS a mormon running this election. :)

[TechBear_Seattle]

8. He's the only one with ONE marriage n/t

[NNN0LHI]

14. Thats what he says

But you know how them Republicans lie.

Don

[gatorboy]

18. There's probably a dozen secret marriages in there somewhere.

Which reminds me...When does Big Love start up again?

[gatorboy]

2. A secret marriage??

Oh, Lord... :rofl:

Lucky for them, conservatives are saying that infidelity isn't a big issue THIS election and it's a private matter and blah, blah, blah, blah...




You know the drill ;)

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Secret marriage were very big in England at one time

Single noblemen would secretly marry their mistresses. If they were discovered, SURPRISE! It was a legitimate marriage. If a politically and/or financially more promising marriage opportunity presented itself, the secret marriage would be secretly dissolved or could be disavowed as ever having taken place.

[bryant69]

4. I don't know what I think about us focusing on this

What is our purpose in doing so? I'm not attacking you; plenty of people are making this point. I just am curious about whether we really think someone who has been divorced is unfit to be President.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[NNN0LHI]

6. It didn't faze me at first

But I think the sheer numbers are beginning to make this interesting.

Don

[Demeter]

7. If a Member of the GOP, Hell, Yes, Unfit for Presidency! n/t

[bryant69]

9. So you'd vote for a member of the GOP who had only been married once?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Demeter]

16. Not What I Said, Bryant n/t

[bryant69]

17. Just clarifying.

I wouldn't vote for a black republican, but I wouldn't hammer him for being black. I'd hammer him for being republican.

Bryant

[gatorboy]

32. And the Republican mantra for the last 10 years has been *drum roll*

FAMILY VALUES.

I have no problem in individuals exposing their little hypocrisies.

[Old and In the Way]

13. It just the audacious hypocrisy of their "core values"

Republicans have been dining on their 'sanctity of marriage' reputation for decades. While doing everything they can to destroy programs that help middle class families. That's why this is such a salient point...it goes to the heart of their corrupted message.

Wouldn't surprise me to see Pat Dobson reorganize the Republican Religious Network under a slightly modified name - "Focus on the Families"

[mwb970]

20. It's the hypocrisy of the Republican Party's "family values" stance.

They obsessively talk the talk, but the only walk their candidates have walked is down the aisle - again!

[lumberjack_jeff]

21. The purpose? It makes me feel good.

I'm happy to poke 'em in the eye with whatever pokey tool they leave handy.

Can't get any traction about using non government email servers to avoid accountability?
Can't get any traction about deliberately revealing the identity of spies?
Can't get any traction about lying to start a war?
Can't get any traction about replacing our democracy with an auction?
Global warming? Katrina? Outsourcing Social Security? Election fraud? Torture? Firing US attorneys to prevent embarrassing prosecutions?

Fine. I'll settle for what I can get. We can get traction by pointing out what slutty hypocrites they are. I'm tired of this "take the high road" crap.

[onenote]

24. feel good in the short run, bad idea in the long run

Maybe it makes you feel good, but does it accomplish anything? Ronald Reagan was divorced -- he still is an icon to the right wing. To the extent that there are voters who care deeply about this sort of thing, they don't need the left to be informing them about the marital history of repub candidates -- if they care enough, they'll make sure to find out.

So where does that leave us: progressives making an issue out of how many times someone has been married (and even how many times their spouse(s) have been married).

Here are a couple of progressives that probably don't share your belief that this is a "feel good" issue: Dennis Kucinich (3 marriages, no idea if any of his spouses were previously married or remarried); Russ Feingold (2 marriages, reportedly in the process getting second divorce, at least one spouse previously married).

And let's not forget that Jim Webb is on his third marriage or that Teddy Kennedy and JOhn Kerry both were divorced

Pointing out hypocrisy on the other side can be a good thing, but not when we're insincere about it. Democrats talk about family values, too. We just have a broader view of what that term should mean. But suggesting that a candidates marital history is a legitimate consideration and that divorce reflects a character defect (see the post suggesting that the repubs must not be "nice to live with". Want to alienate a large portion of the electorate? Suggest that divorced people are bad people).

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. *They're* the ones wrapping themselves in the pious family values robes.

They're not bad because they're divorced. They're divorced because they're bad.

Republicans have lost their hold on this country because they are ridiculous. Americans apparently will put up with anything in their leaders except making themselves the punchline of late-night TV jokes.

As someone who loves policy discussions, I have to concede that we need fewer policy wonks and more stand up comics.

[onenote]

28. again -- what is the goal?

If you think someone who is opposed to gay marriage is suddenly going to slap themselves on the head and say, "wow! I was wrong about that" simply because Gingrich and Rudy are serial husbands, you're fooling yourself. Nor are they going to support a once-married Democrat who, hopefully, has a progressive stance towards gay marriage and gay rights, over a multiple-married repub who plays to their homophobia.

So, in the end, do you do anything other than stigmatize divorce, and in so doing, stigmatize both Democrats and repubs and alienate divorced voters (a rather large category)?

[Richard Steele]

29. Pointing out that our opponents are lying hypocrites. That's the point. nm

[onenote]

34. there are better ways to make that point

If the repubs were opposed to divorce, or were criticizing Democratic candidates who were divorced, then pointing out their own marital histories would show them to be hypocrites. But I'm unaware of any candidate who has come out against divorce. Put another way, if a once-married repub like brownback speaks out against gay marriage, is he any "better" than a divorced repub speaking out against gay marriage?

The fact is that the portion of the voting public that supports repubs has a great capacity to compartmentalize and will not see it as hypocrisy for someone who is divorced to argue against same sex marriage on the grounds that a line has to be drawn somewhere and that's where they believe the line should be drawn.

I'm just not sure who we're trying to persuade with this argument?

[lumberjack_jeff]

35. Win. That's it. That's all. That's the objective.

You get to implement policy because you won. You have to suffer the other guys policy when you lose.

There's no policy point to be made, it's simply ridicule. Effective ridicule. You're not stigmatizing divorce, you're stigmatizing hypocrisy.

[flaliberal]

5. Ironic, huh?

Newt actually ran on a slogan "Let your family be like Newt's Family"
once. In a letter to our editor, I guessed that he won't be using that slogan this time, unless he expects all Americans to go out and have two affairs and two divorces. :shrug:

[Rosa Luxemburg]

11. They can't be very nice to live with?

[BeyondGeography]

12. They call it Multiple Family Values

[TlalocW]

15. They're just creating more families to value, that's all.

No hypocrisy here.

TlalocW

[Tsiyu]

19. Denying same-sex couples marriage sure helped them.

Don't you just love how the Conservative Repukes' insistence that gays not marry preserves the sanctity of their own marriages?


Anybody who refuses to make this an issue this time had best remember that the Repukes tricked many Americans into thinking they were the party of "Family Values." We MUST do everything to remind the voting public that Repukes only pay lip service to the concept.

And I have a few divorce decrees in my filing cabinet. But I damn sure am not campaigning on the premise that I am a member of the Most High and Holy Moral Elite.

[Kelly Rupert]

22. They love the sanctity of marriage so much,

they engage in it weekly.

[skids]

23. Count divorces instead,

..."responsible for marriages" almost sounds good and wholesome.

[Ganja Ninja]

25. With all that promiscuity we may need to have blood tests done

to see if any of them have sexually transmitted diseases.

[Marr]

26. See? Those are REAL fans of male/female marriage.

They love it so much, they do it all the time.

[Generic Other]

30. A club no woman wants to be a member of

Like being herpetic.

[ryanmuegge]

31. Ahh, but they believe in big gov't and restriction of personal choice for everyone else...

So they're still Republican enough to appeal to the religious right.

[myrna minx]

33. The party of Serial Wedders. n/t