Newt #12 -- Saints and Sinners

It's been almost a week since my last "Newt" post, and I'll make this one brief.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, but I wonder if Newt can pull this one off.

He has spent much of the past two years courting religious conservatives, which is what a smart and calculating politician would do in his position. The messy affairs and divorces do not endear him to evangelicals -- except he's now presenting himself as the repentant bad boy who has been "forgiven" by God. And, as I've suggested before, there's nothing that appeals to them quite as much as a repentant sinner who claims to have found the Lord.

And that's exactly what Newt has done. Maybe he's sincere. Maybe I'm just cynical. But it is so exactly what one would do in his position from political calculation, and he is such a known (and confessed) manipulator who thinks he's above ordinary moral obligations, that it is hard not to assume that is what is motivating his pious campaign now.

So -- all that is background to the news today that -- all the while that he's been trolling these religious aisles for support -- his largest financial donor is none other than Sheldon Adelson, the multi-billionaire chairman of the Las Vegas Sands casino, who has contributed $7 million to Newt's coffers.

The Sands is currently under investigation by the Justice Department for bribery allegations in another major casino they own in the hot gambling spot of Chinese Macau. While he was visiting there last year, the local anti-vice squad raided Adelson's hotel room; and, according The Center for Public Integrity, "arrested more than 100 alleged prostitutes and pimps on charges of running a sex ring out of the resort."

Will the evangelical base care? Will they see this as part of the same pattern of Newt giving speeches on family values and, at the same time, cheating on wife #2 with a staff member, whom he now wants us to accept as the First Lady? Will evangelicals see through these patterns and realize that they're being conned by a conniving, amoral politician?

Let's hope so.

Ralph