uExpress.com: Ann Coulter by Ann Coulter -- (08/20/1999) HYPOCRISY ALERT

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HYPOCRISY ALERT

08/20/1999

So Newt Gingrich is getting a divorce. Worse, he has taken up with a younger woman whom he seems to have become involved with before separating from his wife. There are even tapes this time, too. Wholly apart from this being an outrageous and treacherous sin for which the former speaker will burn in Hell, I could kill him myself just for the inane debates that are about to ensue.

After spending one full year defending a multiple felon, Democrats are ready to pounce on any bad behavior committed by any Republican. Even an out-of-work Republican like Newt.

As Maureen Dowd put the argument: "Republicans have been throwing stones from glass houses for so long, they can no longer recognize hypocrisy. ... Newt Gingrich's affair with a young Capitol Hill aide was an open secret in Washington all during impeachment, and all through his pompous lectures about America's cultural and moral decline."

It's odd that Larry Flynt never managed to unearth the big "open secret." Perhaps Dowd has better connections to Republicans on Capitol Hill than Flynt. But then she also has better connections than anyone I know on Capitol Hill, including Newt's colleagues and friends, who were shocked by the story last week. And unlike the Democrats when it came to Clinton, they were appalled, too.

But also unlike Democrats, Republicans comprehend the meaning of the words "worse than." This, Democrats steadfastly refuse to do.

Divorce is bad. Adultery is worse than divorce. And even worse are: committing adultery and lying to the country about it, committing adultery and perjuring oneself about it, committing adultery and tampering with witnesses about it, committing adultery and obstructing justice to keep on lying about it, committing adultery and perjuring oneself about the perjury, and many other offenses, like -- oh I don't know -- how about rape?

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So before being forced to endure the newfound interest in "family values" from the Left, how about a list of the things Newt, moral degenerate though he may be, did (BEGIN ITALS)not(END ITALS) do?

Among other things, Newt did not:

use an armed police officer to summon a woman to his hotel room, drop his pants and demand oral sex from her;

call the woman a liar, and have his mouthpieces dismiss her as trailer-park trash when she complained about it;

make an unwanted sexual advance to a woman in the West Wing of the White House;

have a White House intern whose name he didn't know perform fellatio upon him in the same location;

have the same intern do the same thing to him in the same place while talking to a member of Congress about the deployment of American soldiers;

masturbate into the sink in the same West Wing location after being serviced by the intern;

perjure himself in the presence of a federal judge;

perjure himself before a federal grand jury;

try to secrete evidence, suborn perjury and otherwise obstruct justice;

lie to the nation about all of the above;

after being impeached for the above, say that he was proud to have been given the opportunity to "defend the Constitution";

have private investigators, thugs and flacks investigate, threaten and malign women whom he had sexually harassed and assaulted;

lie some more about all of the above;

make others lie about all of the above.

(Disclaimer: This is only a partial list of the things Newt has (BEGIN ITALS)not(END ITALS) done.)

The Left's obsessive fixation on hypocrisy as the only recognizable transgression leads to a lot of indefensible positions. Newt is a lout, but liberals can't say that. They are on record as not caring about loutish behavior -- everybody does it, it's a private matter, we don't want sex police, etc, etc. So instead of just saying he's a lout, they say he's a "hypocrite."

But is he? Let's play back the record. Gingrich became most vocal about the Clinton scandal in April of last year, when he swore that he would "never again, as long as I am speaker, make a speech without commenting on this topic."

The topic of which he spoke, however, was clearly, pointedly, confined to the president's criminal offenses. "This is about law-breaking," the former speaker said. "This is not about sex. This is not about gossip. This is not about soap operas."

So add that to the list of things that Newt did (BEGIN ITALS)not(END ITLAS) do. He's not a hypocrite.