This is perhaps the moment to remember that in the crowded field running toward ‘08, two out of the three Republican front runners have been divorced. After returning from Vietnam, John McCain couldn’t hold his marriage together. And everyone knows about the Rudy-Judi scandal: it was New York City tabloid fodder for months. So does a mea culpa on Christian radio help Gingrich among evangelicals? A little, but not a lot. “It makes him a less damaged candidate,” says Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, “but he’s still damaged.” In a society where divorce touches almost every family, Land believes conservative Christian voters will prefer the example of McCain, a man who fixed his marital mistakes on the second try. “The fact that McCain has that marriage [to Cindy], and it’s a committed one and it’s of long standing, gives him a real leg up on Gingrich. Gingrich’s confession gives him a slight leg up on Giuliani.”
Still, political consultants on the right believe Gingrich’s radio confession was a smart move. It gets his messy personal life out of the way long before any official announcement of his candidacy. Even if GOP primary voters see it as a transparent tactic, they’re likely to embrace its personal nature. “Social conservatives will always be willing to listen to a confession,” says Keith Appell, a GOP consultant at CRC Public Relations, a firm that has worked with Gingrich in the past but is currently not allied with any candidate. Appell contrasts Gingrich with Mitt Romney, who has not been notably apologetic about his conversion to a pro-life position. “He has not yet made a connection with the people who have labored for decades in the pro-life movement,” says Appell. As for Gingrich himself, he has repeatedly said that he will enter the race later on if he sees an opportunity. And his position on “values”? “I am conservative, and I favor defending traditional marriage between man and wife,” he told NEWSWEEK last summer. If a marriage makes a man, Gingrich may still have some explaining to do.
