Newt Gingrich had a terrible image problem, after cheating on his wife while he was busy impeaching Bill Clinton for -- well, cheating on his wife. And the wife Gingrich was cheating on he had cheated on his former wife with! Now Gingrich has a wife, Callista, who reassures Republicans that Newt no longer cares about sex -- congratulations!

The Stanton Peele Addiction Website, May 12, 2011. This blog post also appeared on Stanton's Addiction in Society blog at PsychologyToday.com.

The New Newt Hates Sex -- and He's Got the Wife to Prove It!

I wrote a couple of blogposts about Republican women and sex -- "What's Cindi McCain Like in Bed?" and "Bistol Palin's Last Pleasurable Sex Act" -- boy, did I get in trouble.  My point was that Republican women (not male Republicans, particularly politicans, who are as randy as hell), just can't get no sexual satisaction.  They're not allowed -- and they look a little cold around the gills.  This might be why their husbands go catting around with prostitutes (Lousiana Senator David Vitter), their best friend's wives (former Nevada Senator John Ensign), or women they find on Internet dating sites where they impress them with their bare chests (former New York Congressman Chris Lee).

Even if they don't start out that way, after being married to Republicans for a while, they just don't look like they're getting it on with their spouses (and vice versa, of course).

But that can be a political asset.  Republican voters seemingly dislike sex in all forms.  Thus, Republicans impeached (unsuccessfully) Bill Clinton for his sexual adventures with Monica Lewinsky. But it turned out that the man leading the impeachment effort, Newt Gingrich, was catting around with a staffer -- although he himself was married.  Moreover, he had done more or less the same thing before when he got with the wife he was now cheating on.  What a live wire Newt was!

So Gingrich had to resign.  Then, Newt's replacement as Speaker, Louisiana Congressman Robert Livingston (those Southern boys!), was found out to be serial philanderer - oops, Livingston was gone too.

Anyhow, all these years later, Newt is back.  And that woman he was cheating with, now his wife -- well, here is the Callista Gingrich sex story :

Callista Bisek's friends from rural Wisconsin were stunned when, well over a decade ago, she confided that she was secretly dating an older, married man: Newt Gingrich.

Still in her 20s when they met, Ms. Bisek had been raised in a town of 1,500, the only child of a meat packer and a secretary. A churchgoing Roman Catholic, she had attended a Lutheran college where she practiced piano five hours a day. "Is this the wisest course for you to be taking?" Karen Olson, her best friend, recalled asking.

Today, Ms. Bisek is Mrs. Gingrich, married for 11 years, but perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband's political downfall. His critics cast Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, as a hypocrite who sought to impeach a president over infidelity while engaging in it himself with Ms. Bisek, who was a Congressional aide.

I don't know -- Callista just doesn't strike me as a sex bomb (is it the piano practicing or the Lutheran college?).

But here's the good news! 

Yet in a curious tale of Washington reinvention, the onetime congressman from Georgia is counting on the third Mrs. Gingrich for his political redemption.

And that's because she looks twice as cold as Cindi McCain.  People can look at her and declare with confidence: "Newt's off his cheating ways - why, I believe he's off sex."  Maybe Gingrich has a prostate problem -- he is, after all, 67.

No matter, he's calmed down, seen the light, become religious (become a Catholic, like his wife), and Republicans can safely vote for him again.

Another success attributable to a Republican woman!