Newt Gingrich

Yesterday on Family Talk, James Dobson and Daniel Lapin came to the conclusion that ‘the pill’ paved the way for the destruction of civilization by increasing sexual promiscuity and reducing masculinity. Today, Dobson blamed Bill Clinton for the growing acceptance of “illicit sexuality” among politicians. Dobson, a prominent endorser of Rick Santorum, even lamented that the public isn’t having serious problems with supporting “an admitted womanizer,” Newt Gingrich. The Focus on the Family founder earlier claimed that he wouldn’t support Gingrich because he didn’t want the First Lady to be a former mistress.

Dobson: In the mid- to late-1990s, Bill Clinton, as president, had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. And the popular culture and the elites in media and in government rose to his defense and said that character really doesn’t matter, what matters is that a president is able to do his job properly, and the moral aspect was discounted. And something changed in our culture, not just about Bill Clinton, but about our attitudes toward our leaders being involved in illicit sexuality. And we’re seeing it right now on a number of fronts. I’m going to have to really come close to the limits here, but one of our candidates has been an admitted womanizer, and he has indicated, even to me, that he’s been forgive for that and that only God knows, and I accept that. But the attitude of the public toward that has changed. It is reflective of what happened in the 1990s.

Later in the program, Lapin argued that America is facing economic decline because of the removal of “religious restraints to rampant sexuality,” as men lose “self-discipline” and society is “effeminized.” Lapin then claimed that as “a more feminine society,” America has become more open to the “brutal and violent culture” of “fundamentalist Islam,” which he says is the only way “to explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites have with Islam.”

So there you have it: feminism is responsible for the moral failings of men, economic decline and Islamic radicals.

Lapin: Once you remove the religious restraints to rampant sexuality, and all you got to do is relax those religious restraints and male nature will take care of the rest and bring about the decline of a civilization, one of the mechanisms is of course as we’ve discussed economic because in a sense it requires the same kind of control and self-discipline to get up every single morning and go to work whether you like it or not as it takes to restrain various appetites. So when you weaken one muscle you weaken everything else as well and not only do we have a tendency on the part of a society that has relaxed all form of sexual restraint to also go into free fall economically but what also happens is such a society tends towards becoming a more feminine society in a sense. Islam, fundamentalist Islam, which is essentially a brutal and violent culture is seducing a somewhat effeminized American culture because there is no other way to explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites have with Islam.

As we noted last week, Newt Gingrich was scheduled to appear at a New Apostolic Reformation-affiliated church in Nevada with Jim Garlow on Friday evening for a "Pray for America" event ahead of the Republican caucus on Saturday.

Gingrich, who was the only candidate on the bill, kicked off his address by inviting all the children under the age of twelve in the audience to join him and Callista on stage, explaining that they are the reason he is running for president because they are the future of America and Gingrich intends to make sure that they do not grow up in a secular nation dominated by elites who hate Christianity:

This is the future of America and the reason we're here is we want to learn what kind of future are they going to have. Are they going to have a future of opportunity, of safety, of freedom? Or are they going to have an opportunity of dependence on government, control from Washington, danger from foreigners? And this election may be the most important election of their lifetime and they can't vote yet ... and so, in a sense, we have to stand in as trustees of their country, all of us, every one of us has to stand in.

If I am president, these children are not going to grow up in a secular country dominated by elites who despise our history, dislike our culture, and dislike our religion. These children are going to grow up in a country which is genuinely free and which worships God, which is the source of our rights!

David French is a Senior Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, home of both Jay and Jordan Sekulow, two of Mitt Romney's most high-profile Religious Right supporters.  French too is also a Romney supporter, having launched Evangelicals for Mitt with his wife Nancy.

Today, French penned an op-ed for CNN calling on his fellow evangelicals to drop their support for Newt Gingrich and, in making his case, he certainly didn't pull any punches, calling Gingrich an arrogant, bullying serial adulterer:

If character counts, then so do values like fidelity, honesty, humility and charity. Sadly, Gingrich fails on all these counts ... Churchgoing evangelicals have one of the lowest divorce rates in the country. Gingrich is a thrice-married, serial admitted adulterer.

While the former House speaker tries to change the subject, biblically literate Christians understand that his conduct is a real and present issue. Simply put, a man doesn’t cleanse the moral stain of adultery by marrying his mistress.

Matthew 19:9 is crystal clear: “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Gingrich has divorced his wife and married his mistress twice.

...

[I]s there a more arrogant public figure in American political life than Gingrich? His self-regard is legendary. He’s compared himself to world historical figures from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher to Abraham Lincoln to Pericles.

He has said that people like him stand between America and Auschwitz. His self-congratulatory statements fill press releases, and former colleagues tell tales of his erratic and bullying behavior. Is that the right witness for evangelicals?

Yesterday, Newt Gingrich held another conference call for Religious Right supporters, seeking to mobilize them ahead of the Republican primary in Florida.

The call was hosted by Jim Garlow and featured several other of the Gingrich campaign's Faith Coalition leaders explaining why they had decided to support Gingrich ... and the consensus was that if President Obama wins re-election, it means the end of Western Civilization:

Mat Staver: I believe that if Speaker Gingrich wins Florida next Tuesday, he wins the nomination. If he wins the nomination, he beats President Barack Obama and we have not a cloud hanging over us in November and December of 2012 but we begin to see the clouds dissipating and some ray of sunshine of hope return to this land.

Jim Garlow: At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the United States as we know her will cease to exist as will, then, Western Civilization. Those who are discerning, those who are intuitive to what is happening morally and economically in our nation understand the truth.

George Barna: As you mentioned Jim, for the last twenty years I have steadfastly refused to endorse any individuals or organizations or products. But as I've analyzed the severity of America's situation today, I've come to believe that such self-restrictions are a luxury that we can no longer afford. So after carefully studying all the candidates in regards to the needs I just described and assessing their ability to win in November, I concluded that Newt Gingrich is the best man for the job.

Jim Garlow: We are in a situation that is so crisic in America, I'm actually stunned that President Obama could do this much destruction to the nation in a three year span. I never anticipated that this much harm in the moral and economic arenas of our nation could be brought on by one particular president.

Don Wildmon: This is not a typical election. This is an election unlike any ever held in our country. We're not just voting for a president; we're voting for the continuation of Western Civilization. If those who are listening think that what we enjoy, the freedoms we enjoy, the right to practice our Christan faith, is merely an accident and is there, it's not, people paid for it. And we can lose it, and we will lose it, if we lose this next election. What's at stake is everything that the human race, Western Civilization, has fought for for the last two thousand years.

When Gingrich joined the call, the thrice-married candidate served up some red meat to the audience by declaring that efforts to grant equal marriage rights to gays and lesbians are "pagan behaviors":

It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

Finally, Gingrich explained that he didn't really have any interest in being president but decided that he had to do so because all the other Republicans are so terrible so that he had a moral obligation to step up and save this nation and that he would just magnanimously have to suffer the insults that come his way:

I want people to understand, I'm a volunteer. Callista and I had very long talks for over a year and then we talked with our two daughters and our two son-in-laws because we knew if we tried to offer help the country that we would be subjected to news media assaults, we'd be subjected to vicious gossip, we'd be subjected to people on the web saying horrible things and we'd be subjected to negative ads from our opponents. And we concluded that we are in so much trouble and we are in such grave danger of losing the America that we grew up in and the lack of Republican ability to articulate and communicate and defend is so great that both of us - this was a dual decision - we both concluded that we had a moral obligation to endure whatever comes and to at least offer, as citizens, to try and be of service.