In a former life, I used to pound the pavement, knocking on doors on hot sultry Texas afternoons with a voter list prepared by our local paid political hack … er … political consultant. The list guaranteed that we would not be “preaching to the choir,” nor would we be talking to people who were “unavailable to persuasion.” In other words, no “triple D Democrats” and no voters from the Dark Side.

It kept you on your toes.

On one memorable occasion, I knocked on a door that was opened by a big burly gentleman with no neck to speak of, and I asked to talk to his wife, whose name was on my list – but not his. He took one look at my lapel regalia – aka campaign buttons – and asked why I wanted to talk to her.

I immediately saw my mistake and told him that I had the wrong address.

“I think you DO,” he answered to my retreating back.

I might have blown his wife’s cover as a closet Democrat anyway, and for that, I was and am truly sorry.

But this year, women as closet Democrats have their own campaign spokesperson: Julia Roberts. 

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know,” she says, in a recently released TV ad.

It’s a secret ballot. You can vote for anyone and anything, and the old man doesn’t need to know about it.
This naturally unleashed a furious male MAGA backlash. How dare they tell women to lie to their husbands! Encouraging infidelity is not strictly OK.

The icing on the cake is who chose to loudly object: Newt Gingrich.

Newt, you will recall, has had a checkered past vis-a-vis his marriages.

Three of them.

But that didn’t stop ol’ Newt from saying this:

“For them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption. How do you run a country where you’re walking around saying ‘wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives’?” 

Indeed.

Gingrich divorced his first wife after her cancer surgery and his second wife while having an affair with his soon-to-be third wife, Callista.

Having the cojones to criticize Democrats for suggesting that wives should lie to their husbands about who they voted for, when he himself felt the need to lie to his wives to cover his infidelities is a little rich.

But to Newt, it’s just another day in politics.