I can think of three possible scenarios:

1) The novelty of this stuff wears off and we all start ignoring it.
2) People just become even more jaded and cynical than already and drop out.
3) Candidates stop trying to be everything to everyone and stick to some central platform, which people can choose or not.

I would clearly prefer number 3. I think number 2 is most likely.

YouTube is the new broadcaster of political hypocrisy- proving you can no longer be all things to all people! What’s interesting is that this phenomenon is occuring just as the two halves of America get more and more polarized over everything from the war to immigration. Expect numerous gaffes from everyone, replayed 24/7 on the net and cable outlets. Will it drive us even farther apart?

And yet that just doesn’t work anymore in the 24 hour news / blog / YouTube / video phone world. What you say will be heard and if you say something really dumb it will be broadcast for tens of thousands. Polticians keep forgetting this (Mayor Nagin and George Allen come to mind), but I thought Newt had it figured out. It’s too bad in some ways, because he is a politician with actual ideas, even though I often disagreed with them.

Newt Gingrich has been thrice married. He married his first wife Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old; she was seven years his senior at 26 years old..[6] [7] After he was alleged to have had an affair with Ann Manning in 1977, Gingrich sought a divorce from Battley[8]. In 1981, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther[9], to whom he remained married until 1999, the same year Gingrich had an affair with a then 33-year old Congressional staffer, Callista Bisek. He and Bisek were married in 2000 and currently reside in Virginia. Gingrich has two daughters, Kathy and Jackie from his marriage to Jackie Battley, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren.[10]

Gingrich’s infidelity and personal life has been the subject of much attention from both the media and his political opponents through the years. In 1992, his Democratic opponent, Tony Center, ran an ad claiming that Gingrich had “delivered divorce papers to his wife the day after her cancer operation.” (a false accusation, though friends have acknowledged that he brought up divorce terms to his estranged wife while visiting her in the hospital)[11]. Also, in March of 2007, Gingrich revealed that he was having an affair while spearheading the Bill Clinton impeachment trial.”[12].

The only reason Gingrich could conceivably have a chance is that Hillary Clinton was more repellent during her and Bill’s earlier stay in the White House. I suspect many reconsider their stance on Hillary Clinton while Gingrich continues to offend people.

As to the subject of this story, Gingrich is just pandering to the Religious Right to get them to line up behind him and vote Republican.

Ted Kennedy *hiccup* for President? I doubt it would ever happen.

Did anyone here REALLY think Newt was a viable and electable candidate anyway? He makes for good sound bites, fires up a certain section of the base, but he has as much of a chance of getting the Republican nomination as Kennedy does the Democratic nomination.

k, will you please stop that incessant slandering of Bill Clinton already!

LOL!

More seriously, since Jimmy Carter is getting his post-speech mulligan……so should the Newster.

If these exact words were not a mispeak, then, fine, I agree, he has lost his coordinates for public speaking.

However, since he was talking throughout the entire speech about the “conversion BY radical secularism”, I have a hunch he was probably trying to say the passing of Falwell should not be read as an opportunity for the secularists…..as opposed to what came out.

Don’t worry, Joe, that pandering, immoral, hypocritical, philandering nutcase isn’t going to get anywhere. Remember how he helped Rumsfeld with the Iraq War plan over at DOD? That alone will make his candidacy sink like a stone. Plus his three marriages, and retreat from the House after ethical violations, might give even Liberty graduates some pause.