Dum Pendebat Filius

If you are interested, readers, in hearing how Newt Gingrich managed to keep up his self-esteem while publicly castigating Adulterer And Sinner President Clinton and privately cheating on his own wife, you can read a transcript of his “interview” with James Dobson at WorldNetDaily.

For Gingrich, he says, it was basically All About The Lies. He admits he knew he was behaving hypocritically, but says that he wasn’t passing personal judgment on Clinton (“at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being”), just “say[ing] that you cannot accept felonies and you cannot accept perjury in your highest officials.”

Now, praise God, Newt has seen the light –

I believe deeply that people fall short and that people have to recognize that they have to turn to God for forgiveness and to seek mercy. Somebody once said that when you’re young you want justice and that when you get older you want mercy. I also believe that there are things in my own life that I have turned to God and have gotten on my knees and prayed about and sought God’s forgiveness. I don’t know how you could live with yourself and not end up breaking down if you didn’t find, try to find, some way to deal with your own weaknesses and to go to God about them.

See also Digby’s comments on this topic –

I hope that nobody gets the idea that Newt Gingrich’s comments to James Dobson exposing him as a rank hypocrite are going to mean anything to the Christian Right. They have proven that they are remarkably flexible when it comes to the personal morality of Republican leaders. If they repent for what they’ve done, they are forgiven, no harm no foul. (See most recently, Mark Foley.)

Newt’s public show of pious contrition should be all it takes to wipe the slate clean.