Newt's Ex tells a provocative tale.

[pepperbear]

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/11/newt-gingrichs-skeletons-his-past-wives/?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicsdaily.com%2F2010%2F08%2F11%2Fnewt-gingrichs-skeletons-his-past-wives%2F

*snip*

Newt proposed to Marianne (she was 28, he 36) in 1980 while his first wife, Jackie, was in the hospital recovering from treatments for uterine cancer. He hadn't yet even asked her for a divorce. Newt met Jackie in high school. She was his geometry teacher. He was sixteen, she was 25. When he left, Jackie was nearly destitute. Jackie, the Esquire story reports, "had to get a court order just to pay her utility bills."

*snip*


Some of the revelations are small -- Newt hated to be criticized for his weight, more than anything. Some of them challenge the folksy narrative Gingrich has created for himself, about his mother, for example. "She was pretty drugged up for a long time," Marianne tells Richardson.

Some of them are explosive in a town that privileges quiet staffers over mouthy associates. "He's a sociopath, but he's our sociopath," Marianne Gingrich quotes his staffers as saying, during the late 1990s when the House Ethics Committee investigated Gingrich's GOPAC's donations and his charity fundraising came under suspicion.

edited to add:

Callista Bisek, Gingrich's current wife, became his mistress first and his wife second (really third, if one is counting wives), while Marianne was home visiting her mother. In 1999, Marianne had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Newt asked Callista to marry him before he and Marianne had agreed to divorce. The affair had been going on for years. Newt compared Marianne to a "Jaguar" and Callista to a "Chevrolet" and said he needed a Chevrolet, not a Jaguar, according to the Esquire story. In 2000 the couple wed.

Even so Gingrich continued to give speeches about family. "How do you give that speech and do what you are doing?" Marianne asked him. They were in the death throes of their relationship. "It doesn't matter what I do," he told her, according to the Esquire story. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I say. It doesn't matter what I live."

[JerseygirlCT]

1. Rec just for the fun of the gossip

He's such a jerk.

[jaysunb]

2. Same reason n/t

[undeterred]

3. "He's a sociopath, but he's our sociopath"

If you're saying that its time to find another campaign to work on.

[kenny blankenship]

5. People who want to be minions and henchmen to Republican Party leaders

had better be sociopaths themselves, I would think, or else have a very high tolerance for sociopathic behaviors. (The ideal candidate for this position will like being bullied and will enjoy passing on abuse in turn to their underlings and low ranking colleagues).

[Control-Z]

4. He is a scary

and dangerous man. If you haven't already read the Esquire article, here's the link:

http://www.esquire.com/features/newt-gingrich-0910