I see your source repeats the lie that Gingrich served his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer. I pretty much stopped reading there, since there's no point in continuing with such a factually challenged source.
No, he
merely discussed (and may have argued about) divorce with his first wife, who rather creepily was also his high school geometry teacher when he was a teenager, while she was still in the hospital recovering from having a tumor removed (a benign tumor, but still a tumor that required surgery to remove), so Newt could then marry the woman he was having an affair with. Who he then, in turn, also cheated on for several years with a woman who he then married after divorcing the woman he cheated on his first wife with.
Other than that, of course, the story is a
total slander and lie.
I was sorry that you were stopped so quickly Ziggurat, I would have liked to have seen what you had to say about some of the other issues in the list. Maybe ANTPogo's response has softened your view on this a bit and you could try to make it a little farther down the list?
My own take on the list:
1. Multiple marriages - this kind of thing matters most to the partisans. If you're for the guy, it's his own business and all you care about is his policies if you're against the guy this kind of thing marks him as evil. However in this case, my guess is that Gingrich's particular collection of divorces and affairs will be a major barrier to his election if he made it out of the Republican primaries.
2. Infidelity -OK, this is just piling on. Hard to see how this is different than item one, accept it throws in the supposed hypocritical angle of Gingrich having an affair while he was harassing Clinton for his. I actually could see an argument that Gingrich wasn't hypocritical here but I don't feel like making it and to the general public Gingrich did sort of look like a hypocritical jerk on this. Probably another hit against Gingrich in the general election.
3. Deadbeat dad - I didn't know that. If it isn't just political spin, I'd think less of the guy and it will hurt him in the general election. But I suspect this is just political spin and it probably won't hurt him.
4. Healthcare hypocrisy - Yes, except that if you are a Republican you pretty much need to be hypocritical about this. The Republicans have come up with various terms, like death panels, to criticize Obama's plan rather than engaging in a realistic discussion of the issues. A Republican is just not going to get out of the primary if he doesn't engage in Obama bashing on this. So go ahead and criticize Gingrich for this but I haven't seen any Republican scrambling to actually discuss health care issues objectively.
5. Government shutdown - At the time I thought it was a good thing that the Republicans would rather shut the government down than descend into fiscal irresponsibility. What I didn't realize then is that the Republicans are at least as fiscally irresponsible as the Democrats and the shutdown was just politics and the reaction of the general population that it was more the fault of Republican political shenanigans than Clinton was probably right. And Gingrich as leader of the shutdown deserves more of the blame.
6. Freddie Mac payouts - Gingrich looks like a lying scumbag on this to me, but I stand to be corrected.
7. Confederate sympathizer and racist - fairly routine charges against any prominent conservative. I wouldn't believe it until I saw something more than I have seen. A lot of people criticize Pat Buchanan as anti-Semitic. I looked into a bit and it looks like he might be. Maybe Gingrich is a racist, but I doubt it right now.
8. Draft dodger - I was a draft dodger and I sympathize with the decision, but I was also very undecided about the appropriateness of the Vietnam War. If I had believed in it I would have signed up. If Gingrich was an advocate for it and he dodged the draft that sounds like hypocrisy to me. But maybe he was just trying to finish college and the war ended before he could do his bit.
9. Personal fiscal irresponsibility - Spending a lot of money on jewelery strikes me as stupid, so I don't like it on that level. It also sounds like there may have been some corruption in that Tiffany was seeking government favors at the same time Gingrich was getting no-interest loans but I'm not convinced of the connection.
10. Contract with America - This just sounded like routine partisan sniping to me. I thought some of the Contract with America stuff was fine.
11. Big Ego - More petty sniping IMHO.
