All in the Family

Perhaps it is a coincidence -- some may call it karma -- but two of the three presidential front-runners in the self-described "party of personal responsibility" have, to put it mildly, sloppy private life stories.

Republicans have long chastised Democrats as the party of loose morals yet while Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-New York) try to court the support of social conservatives, both have at least one failed marriage and bouts of infidelity. Rumored presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has a lot of both.

McCain married his second wife a month after his previous marriage, which included an affair, was dissolved.

Giuliani was married to his second cousin for fourteen years -- illegal in dozens of countries and forever dubbed "the weirdness factor." He had an adulterous affair while married to his second wife and publicly announced his intention to separate from her before he informed her. (However, it is not even close to former House Speaker Gingrich, who served his first wife and former high school math teacher, with divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer. It takes a certain kind of assholeness to do that.) Giuliani is currently working on a third marriage and appears to have forgotten about his past.

The third GOP front-runner, former Governor Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts) has had only one marriage and his wife Ann found it to be a perfect opportunity to take a shot at her husband's political opponents.

"The biggest difference between Mitt Romney and the other candidates," she said, is that Mitt has "only had one wife."

In addition to questioning the moral standing of McCain and Giuliani, Ann Romney basically wrote off the cadre of second tier GOP candidates, not worth mentioning by name, that have had only one wife.

Romney, however, continues to get pummeled for his previously-held socially liberal views.

The lack of enthusiasm for the leading Republican candidates by the conservative base is perhaps a karmic creation of their own prejudices as explained by Chris Rock in his 1999 stand-up Bigger and Blacker:

"Whoever you hate will end up in your family. You don't like gays? You're gonna have a gay son. You don't like Puerto Ricans, you're daughter's gonna come home with Livin' la Vida Locaaa!!!"

And if you hate pro-choicers and gay rights supporters, you get Rudy Giuliani as your front-runner.

Cross-posted at The Right's Field.