His campaign was already deeply in debt, without staff, and basically even the media realized Gingrich was using it as a Tiffany’s slush fund, but this should put the final stake through that vampire:
The Brody File has learned that The Family Leader, an influential pro-family group in Iowa will ask each of the 2012 presidential candidates to sign a marriage pledge that professes everything from marital fidelity to embracing a federal marriage amendment.
The document, which has a total of 14 points is called, “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family.”
I highly doubt that one of the 14 points is leaving your wife lying in the cancer ward while you trot around with another woman.
On a more serious note, what do these religious nuts think another set of vows will do? When people get divorced, they are already breaking one set of vows.
Baud
They anticipated Newt (FTA):
BTW, love the last two items from the link:
Bob
Smart pols don’t sign ANY pledges…at all.
El Tiburon
I have found the fatal flaw in your little rant there Johnny old boy.
Cris (without an H)
I actually know the answer to this, but what are these two points doing in a document called “The Marriage Vow?”
Come on now.
MikeJ
I’ll go even further than rejecting sharia because it’s anti-woman. I’ll reject fundamentalist christianity too! And of course I won’t let the Catholics off the hook.
Roger Moore
It will attract attention. They’ll either be able to claim that all the Republican candidates support their ideas about marriage or they’ll be able to roast some candidate(s) for failing to support marriage adequately. Either way, they’ll get their organization into the news cycle for a few days. Media whores gotta whore.
Linda Featheringill
A constitutional amendment regarding marriage? On what grounds? Interstate commerce?
Actually I think that Jesse Ventura nailed the whole marriage issue in a casual statement on some show. All governmental bodies should stay out of marriage [consenting adults, of course]. All marriages should be listed in a civil registry and anything else is up to individual preferences. Church? Fine. Fancy clothes? Fine. Whatever.
Yevgraf
This is because the craven fucksticks want to forgive their own movement folks while using the tenets of their creepy, apocalyptic death cult to beat up on everybody else for doing the very things they do themselves.
The USSR had the right idea when it institutionalized religious folks.
Cris (without an H)
@Baud: Yeah, love that “anti-woman Sharia” line. They hate Islam because they’re such big feminists, don’t you know!
The full statement in the doc is:
emphasis mine. I read that as pro-choice, boys!
kdaug
All in, or fold – no middle ground.
I know good people on both sides of the divide, but I know a shitload more trying to play the middle.
Do it or don’t.
Amir_Khalid
I thought you’d have figured this out by now. (Or more likely, you have indeed figured it out, and are just snarking.) It’s really not about getting people to live up to the pledge; it’s about getting people to make it, as a sign of loyalty to The Cause.
Wasn’t that how it went with those girls who signed up for that virginity-promise thing in the last decade?
jl
I predict the hapless Cole will be fooled on this one by the reactionaries (once again!).
Newt, is a man. A white man. I good Christian white man. There will be a loophole. Newt is a Catholic now, and their idea of reparations, sorrowfulness, and repentance are a tad stricter than Prot Xtianists, but Newt will wriggle out that any trouble that poses. Or bald face lie about it.
tip for Cole: Lucy + football.
mantis
On a more serious note, what do these religious nuts think another set of vows will do? When people get divorced, they are already breaking one set of vows.
Yes, but these are vows to their masters: the people that deliver the religious rube vote. Those other vows are just to god. Big difference.
Davis X. Machina
@Cris (without an H): Because nothing is more anti-woman, more controlling of women, than the availability of safe and legal abortion and (what we know they’re all really after) birth control
I can try to make my brain do these tricks, but it always falls over before making it all the way through the loop-de-loop.
jonas
1. I’d bet anything that if you actually sat some of these fundamentalists down with the Koran and other Islamic writings and ticked off elements of sharia law that pertain to women’s rights and the family, they’d agree with 99% of it. Didn’t Michelle Bachmann just state the other day that she’s a “submissive Christian wife?”
2. Government a “burden” on families? I bet they include under “burden” such oppressive programs as food stamps, Medicaid, SSI disability, college loans, school lunches, etc. — you know, the few meager things that keep millions of people in this country from utter destitution. I suppose if you have a really rich family, you don’t need that stuff. And if you’re not rich, well, you obviously pissed Jesus off for some reason, so fuck you.
burnspbesq
You can read any way you want, but I think we both know that it’s not intended as a pro-choice statement, any more than “I prefer butter pecan over chocolate chip mint” is intended as a pro-choice statement.
Just Some Fuckhead
A better question is why is someone else’s personal relationship any of their fucking business?
Warren Terra
A year after his sister got married, the twice-divorced, twice-married-his-adulterous-lover Newt funneled $350,000 to an Iowa anti-gay-marriage group. Family values, indeed.
Calouste
@Cris (without an H):
“other” in that sentence means “non-Christian”. You need a Fundiespeak-English dictionary.
Warren Terra
@ jonas,
well, food stamps, education and the like keep the little woman from staying home, barefoot and pregnant and without options. So of course they’re a burden on the family.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think it was a Vanity Fair article that said he prefers to be blown, I’m guessing ’cause it’s not really adultery.
Stefan
On a more serious note, what do these religious nuts think another set of vows will do? When people get divorced, they are already breaking one set of vows.
I can’t remember which state it was, but recently a Democratic state legislator attempted to amend a proposed anti-marriage equality law that would have defined marriage as being between “one man and one woman.” The legislator introduced a motion to change it to “one man and one woman, once, for life.”
Needless to say, all those conservatives who were supposedly so devoted to the sanctity of marriage failed to get behind the new language and it was voted down.
kdaug
What’s the downside to nodding and saying “Yes, I believe”?
John PM
I got two pieces of evidence that point to this pledge not being a problem for Newt:
The speaker at the Presidential Lecture Series on July 11 is…Newt Gingrich.
Han's Solo
Wouldn’t it be great if some trickster put a “marriage pledge” in front of the Republicans that had a promise to outlaw divorce in the fine print? The penalty for going back on the pledge being a promise to quit their job in Congress.
Pangloss
In some of these small towns, I hear Newt’s campaign sometimes has trouble booking hotels with a mirror on the ceiling.
David Hunt
That’s a nice image, but none of those clowns are going to sign a pledge to keep breathing if they’re also pledging to quit if they break it.
trollhattan
Speaking of pledges and fucksticks, Grover was on NPR this a.m. re-re-redefining the meaning of Teh Pledge(tm) in light of the current congressional…whatever teh hell they’re doing at present. Fiddling with accelerated depreciation schedules is A-OK so long as there’s a tax cut somewhere.
I’d love to see a Republican politician somewhere/anywhere with the cajones to say, “I’m not signing anybody’s ‘pledge’ ever because I want the flexibility to do my job and effectively represent my constituents.”
I know…crickets.
Dennis SGMM
How many pledges do Republicans have to sign these days? I know that signing Grover Norquist’s “No New Taxes” pledge is pretty much mandatory. Are there others?
kdaug
@ 27 efgoldman – July 7, 2011 | 5:18 pm
Empirical evidence suggests otherwise.
murican
@29; “In some of these small towns, I hear Newt’s campaign sometimes has trouble booking hotels with a mirror on the ceiling.’
http://instantrimshot.com/
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
So if two lesbians want to get married …?
Wait, I forgot. Totalitarian Control = Control not Mandated by the Bible.
Oh well, it should make the PUMAs happy.
Linda Featheringill
I’m still fretting with McCotter’s 5 principles, specifically the fifth one:
“Our truths are self evident, not relative.”
Now what does that mean? “If we hold something to be true, it is not to be questioned”?
El Cid
I’d wager they wouldn’t give a shit about Newt’s marriage history.
Dennis SGMM
@El Cid
Yep. Besides, Newt has been Forgiven and, for the wingers, no matter how much of a fuckup you are, being Forgiven is like getting a medal.
Amir_Khalid
OT: The Guardian’s NOTW liveblog has a media lawyer saying that winding up NOTW as a business could give News International legal cover to destroy potentially incriminating evidence — in this case, of cellphone hacking, of bribes paid to cops in return for leaked information, of the paper’s senior ranks approving these and other crimes.
The sneaky bastards.
RalfW
Here boy! C’mon!
(dog-whistle extra-or-dinaire!)
Jay in Oregon
I wonder how many Democrats they’ll even approach about signing the pledge? It’s tribal identification, nothing more.
“Whenever the locals rub blue mud in their navels, I rub blue mud in mine just as solemnly.” — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
SIA
Newt Blingrich.
(Am I the first?)
Elizabelle
OT, but President Obama’s contempt of gay Americans continues, unabated.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/president_appoints_lesbian_vet.php
That Obama and those Democrats.
No daylight between them and Republicans.
RalfW
Stefan @24
That was Minnesota a few weeks ago. I’ve met the legislator, she’s awesome. My partner was in the hearing room, said it was a hoot. Really the only light moment in an insanely shitty session in St. Paul this year.
And it clearly ain’t over yet. The anti-tax pledge all these fucktards signed has given us a record-setting second shutdown in just six short years.
I can’t quite believe that Minnesota is as gridlocked, and teatard screwed as the rest of you assholes.
Oh, and we have a delightful marriage amendment fight to spend several million on next year. Joy.
RalfW
Materials not deemed destructive to marital intimacy may be enjoyed at will.
Jay in Oregon
Better yet, just ask them if they support those tenets, and after their necks get tired from nodding up and down, announce “Well, then it sounds like you support sharia law!”
Elizabelle
Amir: yeah, Murdoch acted with such alacrity you know he and his top dogs foresee real jeopardy. Amputation to try to save the rest of the patient.
I am hoping the public firestorm prevents them from doing any shredding, a la Enron and Arthur Andersen.
Cruised NYTimes reader thread. Some were hoping some enterprising journalists would investigate practices at all Murdoch properties.
I hope the Brits and Americans can use this to retool ownership laws for media.
Consolidation has not been good for democracy or society.
Another Bob
It’s just making a lame attempt to pander to the rubes. Gingrich has made a career out of it.
Mike Kay (Geronimo !!!)
Barney Frank Comes Out Of The Closet.
Frank came out against using the 14th amendment to deal with the debt limit. Oh, brother.
See, now the wingers can say, “even the liberal Barney Frank is against Dictator obama”.
blogs and commentators who love to dump on Obama, will they be consistent and hold Frank’s “feet to the fire” for blinking and caving, and lending aid and comfort to the teabaggers?
Mike Kay ( Geronimo !!)
Barney Frank Comes Out Of The Closet.
Frank came out against using the 14th amendment to deal with the debt limit. Oh, brother.
See, now the wingers can say, “even the liberal Barney Frank is against Dictator obama”.
blogs and commentators who love to dump on Obama, will they be consistent and hold Frank’s “feet to the fire” for blinking, for caving, for lending aid and comfort to the teabaggers?
Less Popular Tim
Attributed to Georges Clemenceau, regarding Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
Barney Frank Comes Out Of The Closet
Frank came out against using the 14th amendment to deal with the debt limit. Oh, brother.
See, now the wingers can say, “even the liberal Barney Frank is against Dictator obama”.
blogs and commentators who love to dump on Obama, will they be consistent and hold Frank’s “feet to the fire” for blinking, for caving, for lending aid and comfort to the teabaggers?
HyperIon
I saw a C-SPAN call-in program recently about Newt. Maybe it was just after the staff left.
There were zero callers on the Republican line during the half-hour I watched. As you can imagine, the Dems and Independents were not enthusiastic about old Newt.
Pangloss
Maybe it was a bad idea for him to use 1970s porn music as a campaign theme song.
Pangloss
Newt’s few remaining campaign staffers are starting to grumble openly about having to lug around the mahogany case that carries his jeweled trident.
bemused
RalfW@44,
Damn, I missed that. Who was she? I’d like to look that one up & send around to friends. All of us in MN need some cheering up.
I was just reading some online comments to other comments in a local paper. The stupid is so deep, I don’t know how these people can even walk around and survive. Still, I have to have faith that the rational and smart MN I’ve known all my life will come out swinging.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
Poor Nancy Pelosi.
When she not dealing with corrupt blue-dogs and Israeli spies, or morons like Kucinich and the Sexting guy, she has to deal with backs stabbers like Barney Frank. This shit is as bad as anything Liebermann ever pulled. You never fucking see the wingers publicly undercutting their leaders. I hope Nancysmash fucking breaks his legs.
JPL
OT..CBS evening news led with Murdoch.
trollhattan
@45.RalfW
Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.
Svensker
This is how my brother deals with Republican sexual infidelities:
When he hears that a movie star or lefty has broken his or her marital vows, he refuses to watch/listen to that person ever again. Then he goes and tunes in to his daily dose of Rush Limbaugh to find out what new awful stuff libtards are doing.
jinxtigr
NotW: not ‘died of shame’, but ‘kill the witness’
JPL
At least Newt didn’t use Twitter..
Redwood Rhiadra
@Linda Featheringill
You don’t need grounds for a Constitutional amendment – an amendment can change just about anything. There’s only *one* still-active restriction on amendments (no state shall be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate).
That’s why these guys love Constitutional amendments.
Perspecticus
“I highly doubt that one of the 14 points is leaving your wife lying in the cancer ward while you trot around with another woman.”
Why would you doubt that?