In the mid-1990s, no political demographic was more outraged over Pres. Bill Clinton’s sexual affairs than Republican women. Their wrath, along with the moral condemnations of the GOP’s evangelical base, fueled the drive by their party’s elected leaders in Washington — led then by House Speaker Newt Gingrich — to do politically to the president what Lorena Bobbitt did to John.
Now, just 15 years or so later, and faced with charges that their party’s frontrunner, Herman Cain, has sexually harassed who knows how many of his female employees, Republican women take a different view. A CBS News poll finds that just 38 percent of them see the charges against Cain as a reason not to vote for him:
[Sixty-one] percent of Republican primary voters say the sexual harassment accusations against Cain won’t make any difference in their vote, but 30 percent say the charges make them less likely to back him, and that rises to 38 percent among women. Cain has lost support among women since last month – from 28 percent in October to 15 percent now. He has lost ground with conservatives and Tea Party supporters as well.
A vicious personal attack on a registered Republican by a site purporting to be operated by the PAC of her party’s frontrunner, or a pretty good spoof:
Ew, gross! Who the hell does this ugly b1tch think she’s fooling? … Just to be clear, Karen Kraushaar is the one on the left.
Left, Marianne with Newt; right, Callista, with whom Speaker Gingrich was having an extramarital affair when he sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act
If all it took to be president was chutzpah and cojones, Newt Gingrich would be president for life.
With his Mediterranean cruise and its fallout — the abrupt departure of his senior campaign staff — behind him, Gingrich finally showed up in Iowa over the weekend to campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.
Iowa is one of a handful of states where gay marriage is legal, so naturally reporters asked the thrice-married Gingrich for his take on the legalization of marriage equality in New York Friday night. He replied:
In the wake of a succession of adultery-related scandals by GOP “family values” Christian politicians, including Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Sens. John Ensign of Nevada and David Vitter of Louisiana, a few years ago, Washington Republicans spoke with one voice: We should pray for their families, but these politicians should not resign — their fates should be decided by the voters in their states.
Now, hot on the heels of revelations that Rep. Anthony Weiner exchanged lewd Twitter photos with women he did not otherwise know, Republicans are again speaking with one voice: Screw Weiner’s family and his constituents, he should resign immediately.
Neither Gov. Sanford nor Sen. Ensign resigned when their adulteries were revealed — Ensign finally left the Senate this year after the Ethics Committee referred his case to the Department of Justice.
But what Weiner did pales in comparison with the criminal behavior by Sen. Vitter, who repeatedly paid prostitutes for sex, and who is still serving in the United States Senate. In case you have forgotten the details of Vitter’s prostitution scandals, here’s a five-minute video retelling, titled “Forgotten Crimes,” that was produced by the Democratic Party:
Hyatt Regency SacramentoIt appears that there are indeed more shoes ready to drop in the Arnold Schwarzenegger sex scandal saga. The National Enquirer is reporting that, as governor, Schwarzenegger used his California Highway Patrol security detail to coordinate his assignations with young women in a Sacramento hotel, according to the MailOnline in London:
Arnold Schwarzenegger used state-funded security measures to cover up his many sexual liaisons behind his wife’s back, according to his former security supervisor.
The explosive new claims have triggered a criminal investigation into whether or not the former California governor used tax payers’ dollars to cover up his extra-marital affairs, reports have claimed…
Veteran law enforcement officer William Taylor made the explosive claims exclusively to the National Enquirer and even passed a polygraph test.
News media camped out outside home Schwarzenegger bought Patty Baena and his son in Bakersfield
Every town has its secrets. The difference in Los Angeles is that some of the secrets here relate to world-famous celebrities. It’s fair to say that hardly anyone in town knew that Arnold Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with a member of his household staff. But it’s equally true that there are other rumors — what Donald Rumsfeld might call “known unknowns” — that have been floating around years, decades even, that could come to light, if the scandal escalates, which, based on the volume of news reports in both legit and gossip outlets, appears to be what is happening.
Just in the past few days, the baby mama has been identified as Patty Baena, the Schwarzeneggers’ housekeeper for 20 years. Local news in Los Angeles found the McMansion Schwarzenegger bought her in Bakersfield, and neighbor interviewed by local reporters praised the son as being extremely well-mannered.
Maria Shriver has hired a divorce attorney, although sources say Shriver, who is Catholic, has not yet decided whether to proceed with divorce, which is astounding, if true. Meanwhile, her son, Patrick Schwarzenegger, 17, changed his last name to Shriver on his Twitter account.
And this one had to hurt: TMZ reports that Maria Shriver and Patty Baena were pregnant at the same time. Maria’s son Christopher was born on Sept. 27, 1997 and Baena’s son was born five days later, on Oct. 2, 1997.
Lawrence O’Donnell’s send up of Newt Gingrich’s attempt to excuse his adulteries by saying that his patriotism combined with his workaholic tendencies drove him into the arms of congressional staffers is must-see video.
But I have to point out that not only was Gingrich having an affair with a staffer when he led the Republicans’ campaign to impeach Pres. Clinton because he lied in a deposition in civil lawsuit over his affair with a staffer, as O’Donnell points out, but both Gingrich and Clinton were engaged in extramarital affairs when they made the Defense of Marriage Act the law of the land.
Hopper and CassLast week, GOP candidate for president Newt Gingrich came up with the best pretext yet to explain his serial adulteries and multiple marriages:
NEWT GINGRICH: There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate.
Wisconsin state Sen. Randy Hopper, R-Fond du Lac — the most vulnerable of the senators facing a recall because of their support for Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting bill — may need to try that excuse himself now that his constituents have discovered that a) he is having an affair with with a much-younger lobbyist and b) he has left his wife and two children and is living with his girlfriend in the state capital. It appears he has been living outside his district since he filed for divorce last August, if not before.
The way voters in Hopper’s district found out about his new living arrangements is almost as comical as Gingrich’s suggesting that excessive patriotism drove him to have extramarital affairs. First, on Friday, Hopper issued a statement saying he would not be attending the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Fond du Lac on Saturday, citing a purported death threat:
Cheaters: Barr, Gingrich and Clinton
You’d have to go back to the Jim Crow era to find a law as imbued with bigotry and hatred as DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which Pres. Clinton signed into law in 1996. It’s back in the news now because Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that the administration would no longer defend it in court.
It’s adulterers — not gays — who are the real threat to traditional marriage
DOJ has made it clear, however, that the Legislative Branch is free to defend DOMA in upcoming hearings, which would put Speaker Boehner and his tea party bosses in the same position as the defenders of Proposition 8, California’s anti-gay constitutional amendment. The Prop 8 defenders lost in federal court last year because their “expert” witnesses’ biblical-based testimony that gay marriage should be illegal because homosexuality is a sin was deemed inadmissible in court and because they were unable to provide any evidence that same-sex marriage harms society.
Newt Gingrich, who, as speaker of the House, was instrumental in pushing the law through in 1996, has criticized the president for abandoning the defense of DOMA, and has even suggested that the president could be impeached because he “swore an oath on the Bible to ensure that laws be faithfully executed, not to decide which laws are and which are not constitutional” — a typical falsehood-within-a-falsehood that only liars as practiced as Gingrich can get away with. In reality, the administration said it will continue to enforce the law, and the courts will ultimately decide whether DOMA is constitutional, with or without a defense by the Executive or, for that matter, the Legislative branch.
Gingrich feels free to weigh in on DOMA because he’s never had to address the fact that while DOMA was sailing through the House under his direction, he was quite openly engaged in an extramarital affair with a congressional staffer. His affair with Callista Bisek, which apparently started in 1995, had been reported in British newspapers, Time magazine and Salon.com well before DOMA was debated in the House. The affair continued for years, and was still going on while Speaker Gingrich led the impeachment of Pres. Clinton over the president’s own affair with a staffer. In fact, Republicans in Congress became so unnerved by the prospect of the speaker’s affair coming to light while they drummed up outrage over Clinton’s dalliances that, in 1998, a group of GOP House members — including at least briefly current Speaker John Boehner — demanded that Gingrich resign. Gingrich was finally forced to acknowledge the affair the following year when it became public record during his second divorce.
A serial adulterer, Gingrich had multiple extramarital affairs when he was a college teacher. He is also infamous for an incident during his first divorce — he left wife number one after a lengthy affair with soon-to-be wife number two — when he forced his first wife to discuss details of their separation while she was in a hospital bed recuperating from cancer surgery.
The Valentine’s Day 2011 issue of the National Enquirer features a story alleging that GOP Speaker John Boehner has had adulterous dalliances “with at least two different women” in Washington.
Frankly, the article, which was leaked by the website Boy Culture, seems pretty thin. There’s a rehash of the story broken by Mike Stark, an openly liberal D.C. journalist, after Labor Day alleging that Boehner, 61, had had an ongoing affair with a printing industry lobbyist, Lisbeth Lyons, who appears to be in her late thirties or early forties.
From left: Debbie Boehner, Lisbeth Lyons, Leigh LaMoraThe second woman mentioned in the Enquirer article is Leigh LaMora, a former press secretary to a Colorado Republican ex-congressman. While Boehner’s alleged dalliance with Lyons was recent, the tabloid says Boehner hooked up with LaMora at a party in 1997, when Boehner was 47 and LaMora was 32.
The speaker and his wife Debbie, a real estate agent in Ohio, have been married for 37 years and have two children. But there may be more here than a politician breaking a pledge to his wife. If the allegations are true, it appears Boehner’s affair smacks of corruption, according to Stark:
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
“If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”
“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”
“The U.S. State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas during President Donald Trump’s administration so far,” Fox News reports.
President Donald Trump is asking for $1,500,000 million for the military for next year. That’s close to $600 billion (adjusted for inflation) more than we were spending on the military in fiscal year 2025, before Trump took office, Alternet reports. This increase is huge by any measure. It comes to around $4,600 per household. It is around 8% of the total budget.
A new Emerson College survey of likely 2026 voters finds the Democrats with an 11-point advantage over the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, leading 53% to 42%. President Trump holds a 39% job approval rating, consistent with the past two months, whereas his disapproval increased another point, to 57%.
A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.
Wall Street Journal: “Around 40% of voters in the 2024 election said the economy was their top issue, far outstripping any other matter. And those voters favored Donald Trump by 60% to 38%. Many say they were moved by his pledges to tame inflation, rebuild U.S. infrastructure, cut red tape and trim government waste. … About a year and a half later, more voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy than approve, 61% to 35%, an average of polls by the Cook Political Report found this month.”
In the mid-1990s, no political demographic was more outraged over Pres. Bill Clinton’s sexual affairs than Republican women. Their wrath, along with the moral condemnations of the GOP’s evangelical base, fueled the drive by their party’s elected leaders in Washington — led then by House Speaker Newt Gingrich — to do politically to the president what Lorena Bobbitt did to John.
