Lakhota
Diamond Member
By Cynthia Tucker
Ive known Newt Gingrich for a long time. I remember when he was first elected to Congress from Georgia, and I remember his swift rise as a pugilistic, bombastic back-bencher. He can be fun in conversation if you enjoy intellectual combat, and I do. He can also be pompous, self-serving, overweening and hypocritical. He uses words as weapons, with little regard for whether what he says is actually true. If he has a moral core, its hard to pinpoint.
I have known the Newtster long enough that I remember his very unpleasant divorce from his first wife, Jackie. Thats bound to come up since hes now holding the anti-Romney chair in the parlor game that passes for a GOP presidential primary. And, over the years, hes done a reasonably good job of playing defense on that subject, persuading many journalists that their initial reports of that divorce were wrong.
No, Jackie Battley Gingrich was not on her deathbed. Those who said so were wrong since shes still alive.
Last year, one of his daughters, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, wrote a revisionist history of the infamous hospital visit, in which she even claimed that it was her mother, Jackie, who wanted to end the marriage. Perhaps thats true. I dont know since I was not there.
But I do know the younger Jackies version of events is quite different from what her mother, Jackie Battley Gingrich, told The Washington Post in 1985. Newts first wife told Lois Romano:
He can say we had been talking about it (a divorce) for tne years, but the truth is that it came as a complete surprise. Hes a great wordsmith. . .He walked out in the spring of 1980 and I retruned to Georgia. By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said Daddy is downstairs and could he come up? When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from surgery.
Why bring that up when there is so much other Gingrich baggage to discuss? I just wanted to set the record straight since that was a crucial piece of my early understanding of the Newster.
The truth about Newt Gingrichs first divorce
Sooo, now we know the truth - directly from the mouth of Newt's first wife, Jackie Battley.
How are you righties going to spin this...?