It seems to me that the Republican presidential candidates are all flawed in one way or another. Perhaps it is always this way.
The problem with Newt Gingrich seems to be that women can't see past the two divorces and some of the circumstances or rumored circumstances around them. Conservative women like Christine O'Donnell, Linda McMahon, Nikki Haley, and Kelly Ayotte support Romney whereas conservative and liberal Republican women like Ann Coulter, S. E. Cupp, Susan Molinari, Jennifer Rubin, and Meghan McCain seem to hate Newt Gingrich. I guess the rest of the Romney cheerleaders (Elizabeth Dole, Lisa Murkowski, Mary Bono Mack, Diane Black, Judy Biggert, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and Nan Hayworth) probably fall somewhere in between.
People including non-political women can often have very differing views regarding Gingrich's divorces. For example, if you come from a family that has had someone who is a military combat veteran or is gay, you probably have a different view about certain political issues. If you come from a family where divorce is rare or frequently due to cheating husbands, your opinion is going to be quite different.
Jenny Sanford isn't going to vote for Newt. (I might have died of a heart attack if she had endorsed him. ) John McCain divorced the former swimsuit model who waited for him, and my Kansas grandmother never forgave Bob Dole for divorcing his first wife. Fred Thompson got married at 17, an even younger age than Newt first did at age 19. Mr. Morality Joe Lieberman has also been divorced. Ron Paul and Herman Cain have been married about a combined 100 years to their wives, but that doesn't really interest their critics. I will never forget the number of women who loved "dreamy" Senator John Edwards just because his wife was older than him and didn't look like a skinny, blonde model. I think senate candidate Jack Ryan had to give up a chance to run against Barack Obama because he wanted to do what many trekkies and young men also wanted to do with his wife. John Kerry divorced his wife, but perhaps this actually helped cost him the 2004 election with women of Ohio and elsewhere.
Gingrich has been divorced twice you say. Well, let's compare Newt Gingrich to Rudy Giuliani. What's the difference? Is it just the North-South cultural split? Both have been married three times. Both are Catholic. Unlike most presidential candidates, neither one has ever held statewide office. Both are combative. Both are two of the only non-president Republicans to have recently been Time magazine's Man of the Year. Both have perhaps taken some unusual positions throughout the years sometimes in an effort to try to keep moderate supporters happy for the greater good. However, Giuliani is the one who racked up all the political endorsements for his 2008 presidential campaign. He had endorsements from governors, senators, and congressmen from places such as California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Some household names that endorsed Giuliani included the Rev. Pat Robertson, Rick Perry, Steve Forbes, Donald Trump, Bo Derek, John Elway, Jeff Gordon, Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Dennis Miller, and Jon Voight. That's quite a different reaction than what Newt has received.
Does this mean that a proper marriage certificate is probably a million times more important than a proper birth certificate and that only married never-divorced people should apply for the job of president? Probably. Who knows what goes on in the mind of an average American female voter as they are all gloriously quite different. The point is that it's a different time. Today Judith Exner, Kay Summersby, Lucy Mercer, and Sally Hemings would have their own election-eve interviews with Brian Ross, Oprah Winfrey, and The View. The attitudes of women like Ann Coulter and S. E. Cupp towards Newt Gingrich and perhaps his Tiffany's bill sound a bit like the same type of attitudes that Peggy Eaton stirred up when the wives of President Jackson's cabinet shunned her, causing him to re-shuffle his cabinet.
All in all, I kind of gave up on Newt sometime around Iowa. If Gingrich wanted to be elected, he was going to have to become one of Mitt Romney's biggest supporters and continue to hammer away at President Obama and his allies. I can forgive the divorces, but I can't forgive Newt's inability to turn the other cheek as many times as needed against the golden boy establishment-supported Republican. You don't go to war with someone who buys inks by the barrel, and you don't go to war with the National Review and others who were clearly baiting you into having a fit -- just to prove them right so they can keep their honor in tact. He was going to have to prove that he was not toxic and self-destructive. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt as long as I could. Taking the most recent Fox, CBS/NYT, and PPP polls, Obama has a favorability rating of -2 and Romney has a -8 favorability, but Gingrich is stuck at -32. With numbers like that, I don't think Gingrich could get elected even if the 19th Amendment was repealed.
It's a woman's world sometimes. The rest of us just live in it.
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Apr '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
While this is an excellent summary, I'd like to add to it that the reason that Giuliani got a bunch of endorsements and Newt didn't is mostly not to do with Newt's wives. Giuliani was an appealing candidate who worked well with others. The Giuliani supporters I talked to during and after the primaries seem to have been generally happy with him, somewhat disappointed that he lost. There's little buyer's remorse or sense of shame at his campaign.
Also, Coulter and some of the other pundits listed as being anti-Newt backed Mitt before Newt was the ABR, although I agree that Newt being the alternative certainly encourages enthusiasm for a pro-Mitt stance.
May '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
Hugh Hewitt, who is completely in the bag for Romney, spent several segments of his show accepting calls only from women in SC after the Marianne allegations were widely leaked, and immediately before the debate.
Hugh did not get the response I'm sure he sought. Call after call was of level-headed, polite women explaining why that nonsense didn't bother them. They would, each and every one of them, vote for Gingrich.
It was a stunning bit of radio. I'll put that up against Ann Coulter's *literal* shrieking about Romney in Podcast 101 any day, and the less I say about Coulter, the less likely I am to get pitched from here. So I'll just say thank you, Peter Robinson.
May '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
Gotta disagree there. Now the NRO crowd is growing queasy with Romney, and Gingrich's polls continue to improve here there and everywhere.
One of the biggest mistakes I see Republicans making is interpreting short-term swings as more significant than long-term trends. Newt is the only candidate whose trend over the longest timeline has been relentlessy upward. This is because he is nobody first choice, and everybody's second choice. Romney is stuck.
Dec '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
You're right that Newt has a problem with women voters. Polls don't lie -- guffaw!.. hiccup.. pardon me -- except at the margins. But I think this focus on his marriage history is an oversimplification.
Plenty of men have concerns with Newt Gingrich which overlap in all the different ways with the concerns of women. Here on Ricochet, I know of men with political profiles very similar to my own who are more concerned about a Gingrich nomination than I am. Tabula rasa for instance.
Americans, at least until recent secular tendencies, have had a very Christian ethic of forgiveness. If a man says he's sorry and has apologized to his wife and God, we tend to accept it and move on. It's up to his wife to trust, but verify, as she chooses.
Think of how many American presidents have been forgiven their infidelities by the public. Even Billie Jeff, with probably the most embarrassing exposure of guilt in our lifetimes, is still one of the most popular guys around.
Newt has a bunch of issues from which to select to eliminate him from the running: overbearing ego, progressive temptations to use big government for grandiose schemes...
Dec '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
A fine post. Still, I can't help thinking that if the folks buying 'ink by the barrel' were really in charge here, it would be all over by now. It's certainly true that Gingrich's baggage (all three of them, and the other stuff too) may do him in, but I don't think his takedowns of the media will be his downfall this year.
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
Cloak: This post looks like it took a great deal of thought and research. Well written from top to bottom too.
I'm a fan. Keep up the great work.
Some men too will be turned off by Newt's infidelity.
Believe it or not, young people too. My daughter is a senior in High School. She told me she and her friends were talking in school about Newt divorcing his first wife right after she got cancer and and divorcing his second wife right after she got MS.
Even if it didn't go down that way, if they think it did, then it did.
Jul '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
I'm surprised that one can write a post like this and consider themselves a conservative. This type of thinking comes from the leftist assumption of groupthink. Only black people think like black people, Hispanics only care about Hispanics. This example is that women who are monolithic and unable to think for themselves; some might call it misogynist. It's as if you think women are sitting around saying, "Never mind what Thomas Sowell, Art Laffer, or Rick Perry say, what does S.E. Cupp and Ann Coulter think?" because they can only get their marching orders from people of their own sex.
I think women are smart enough to make their own decisions about the candidacy of Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney by taking information in from all sources, not just the Female Establishment Punditocracy, the weight to which you give these endorsements is probably 100 times more than they're worth.
I will note in passing that Sarah Palin said she'd vote for Newt.
May '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
You seriously think that objections to Newt are due to his marriages and affairs? Republican women are emotional shrews who can't be repelled by socialist rantings against free markets and capitalism, campaign films full of lies, and catch-phrases such as "vulture capitalist"?
I have a much higher opinion of women than you do.
Nov '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
I heard Rick Perry use this phrase - did Gingrich use it, also?
May '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
As a proud former member of Honkies for Herman, I don't put much stock in demographic subdivisions. I have seen more interesting, earth shattering things in this race than Roy Batty can claim.
Jun '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
I don't have much time for women (and there are many) who love Bill Clinton in spite of..., and yet hate Newt Gingrich because of....
Dec '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
I posted yesterday on the Newt! thread that Newt was unelectable, in part, because enough "main stream women" won't vote for him. Newt cheerleaders, still on their high from his "take down" of John King (meh), questioned my point of view. I'll state it again, as others here have pointed out --Newt won't win over the women, and without them, Republicans won't win. Simple. As. That.
May '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
Frankly, I'm not looking for a hero. I'm looking for someone who will mind the store for a few years without messing it up too much. I figure they're all liars. Or to put it more politely I figure they will not be able to deliver on their promises, and anyway, the world will be a lot different in six months, so different problems will require different solutions. Romney seems least likely to screw up. Damning with faint praise? Conservativs should be careful. Gingritch doesn't seem like a careful man to me. Also I don't like Santorum's eyes.
Mar '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
Honkies for Herman
That's awesome. I've never heard that before.
Jan '12
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
Perhaps we might revisit the question after we see the demographics of the vote in the South Carolina primary.
Jun '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
Duane Oyen: You seriously think that objections to Newt are due to his marriages and affairs? Republican women are emotional shrews who can't be repelled by socialist rantings against free markets and capitalism, campaign films full of lies, and catch-phrases such as "vulture capitalist"?
I have a much higher opinion of women than you do. · 43 minutes ago
So, you're saying that the main difficulty women have with Newt is that he's another Obama. Well, they VOTED for Obama. That's not going to drive them away.
Mar '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
If I may make a sports comparison . . . This all feels similar to Steelers qb Ben Roethlisberger and his problems in recent years. Two rape allegations in the course of 24 months. Many female Steelers fans swore they'd never root for him again. They wouldn't wear his shirt. They'd start rooting for another team.
Didn't happen.
Except for some women not wearing his shirt anymore (my brother's wife being one of them), they all continued to hope he played well on Sundays so the Steelers could win. And these was alleged rapes . . . not just being a cad and a cheater.
So, when it comes to Republican women and Newt Gingrich, I have a lot of confidence they will get over his marriage foibles should he become the nominee.
The part that ticks me off is that some of them (I'm looking at you, S.E. Cupp) have said they'd think about sitting home should Newt become the nominee. This sounds like blackmail to me and it shows a complete loss of perspective about who the enemy is. Ladies, you don't have to marry him. You only have to vote for him.
Edited on Jan 21 at 8:07amSep '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
The Cloaked Gaijin:
Gingrich has been divorced twice you say. Well, let's compare Newt Gingrich to Rudy Giuliani. What's the difference? Is it just the North-South cultural split? Both have been married three times. Both are Catholic. Unlike most presidential candidates, neither one has ever held statewide office. Both are combative. Both are two of the only non-president Republicans to have recently been Time magazine's Man of the Year. Both have perhaps taken some unusual positions throughout the years sometimes in an effort to try to keep moderate supporters happy for the greater good. However, Giuliani is the one who racked up all the political endorsements
And Guiliani's son and daughter barely speak to him, while Newt seems to have a great relationship with his two grown daughters. I wonder why this isn't considered when the morality police arrive at the scene of the crime.
Edited on Jan 21 at 8:10amDec '10
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
It's not about what the actual truth is about Newt's personal story. It's what the perception is among potential voters. Newt has huge negatives out there, and they aren't going to go away, no matter what his daughters say about him.
In fact, what Peter King and Tom Coburn say about working with him, and that they may not publicly support him, needs to be factored into the equation.
Jan '11
Re: Newt Gingrich, the women, and the voters. To marry him or divorce him?
The material question here is: Do women vote overwhelmingly as a block in the same sense that minorities do? For example, are there some injuries to a woman that will reflexively bring them to coalesce into a commiserating group irrespective of other variables?
Can women separate their own circumstances from Marianne's and make a rational judgment based only on the merits of Gingrich's candidacy?
If so, Gingrich, has lost a chunk of votes.