Gingrich’s total lack of scruples

Jennifer Rubin

WashingtonPost.com

“Does character matter to Republicans?” asked Jennifer Rubin. Some of my fellow conservatives have now turned to Newt Gingrich as the latest desperate alternative to Mitt Romney. But throughout his career, Gingrich has demonstrated an almost total lack of “character, temperament, and personal rectitude.”

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The former House speaker has admitted cheating on his first two wives with much younger aides, but says Bill Clinton was worse because he lied about his affair under oath. “Quite a campaign slogan: ‘Never committed perjury!’” Gingrich’s hypocrisy knows no bounds: He took $1.6 million from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, and hundreds of thousands more from the ethanol lobby and Big Pharma, yet insists he was paid for his expertise as a historian, not as a lobbyist. This is “delusional.” His smug self-regard is also troubling: “He considers every thought that pops into his head brilliant,” and so proclaimed this week that we should eliminate child-labor laws.

We’ve already learned from Presidents Nixon and Clinton that electing a “dishonest, self-deluded, undisciplined, and personally disloyal (what else is infidelity?) president is a nightmare.” Let’s not repeat that mistake.