The Party of Family Values is about to lose its third straight Speaker of the House amid talk of sex scandals.
Newt Gingrich was the first to go, here is what
Salon.com reported about him during the Monica hearings.
Gingrich pioneered a denial of adultery that some observers would later christen "the Newt Defense": Oral sex doesn't count. In a revealing psychological portrait of the "inner" Gingrich that appeared in Vanity Fair (September 1995), Gail Sheehy uncovered a woman, Anne Manning, who had an affair in Washington in 1977 with a married Gingrich.
"We had oral sex," Manning revealed. "He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" She added that Gingrich threatened her: "If you ever tell anybody about this, I'll say you're lying."
Manning was then married to a professor at West Georgia, the backwater college where Gingrich taught. "I don't claim to be an angel," she told Sheehy, but "he's morally dishonest."
Gingrich refused to comment on Manning's charges, though he has admitted sexual indiscretions during his first marriage -- hey, it was the '70s, man! But Newt's oral sex denial proved embarrassing at a time when he was the secular leader of the "family values" crowd, appearing frequently at Christian Coalition gatherings.
Next came Bob Livingston. Here is
an article from when he resigned.
Fearing that a controversy over his sexual past would undercut his power and tear apart his family, Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) yesterday told an astounded House he will not assume the speakership he claimed last month but would instead resign from Congress next year.
snip
Livington made his decision early yesterday, after a long night of soul-searching and consultation with his wife of 33 years, Bonnie. It was his wife who had insisted that he disclose his past extramarital affairs on Thursday, after learning that Hustler magazine was preparing an expose about Livingston and other members of Congress.
At the heart of his decision was both political calculation and personal concern, according to associates and aides. Even before his official election as speaker by the incoming House, Livingston's support among Republicans had begun to erode because of outrage among a handful of social conservatives and moderates over his sexual revelations.
Reps. Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.) and Steve Largent (R-Okla.), both committed religious conservatives, were among the most outspoken critics, while a few prominent moderates said privately that they were upset because Livingston hadn't disclosed the affairs before he was picked to succeed outgoing Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). With Republicans holding a majority edge over the Democrats of only six seats in the incoming House, Livingston would have lived in constant fear of losing a handful of defectors.
And now we have Hastert, who knew that a pedophile was Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children and did nothing about it.
I want the Republicans who went after Clinton so hard to tell me why their party has now had three Speakers in a row with sex scandals.
We now know that the reason that the Republicans who lecture us for so many hours on sexual morality seem so knowledgeable on these issues sometimes, they have had a lot of first hand experience.
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