and, why is sexual life of a leader important anyway?
For the same reason a lot of people do not like gingrich. It's about how your rhetoric jibes with your actions, and he has a disheartening and well documented history of being a "My rules are for thee, not for me" kind of guy, and his new song and dance routine isn't jibing much better with past performance.
Newt got some people riled way back when making negative comments about gays. When newt tells you gays are bad out of one side of his mouth and says he loves his lesbian sister out of the other, you ask yourself what is up? Sure, he can go back to the love her but done condone her lifestyle routine, but that didn't play well back then. It won't play well now with the same crowd, and wil likely play worse with the current gay marriage movement.
When newt says traditionally family values are the only way to go, but doesn't come from a traditional family and has run through two wives already, you have to ask yoursefl if he has a leg to stand on. If non-tradition families aren't ok and capable of generating ok adults, how can we trust someone coming from the background he condemns others for being the product of?
When newt tells you we need to treat christianity with at least the respect accorded any other religion under the first amendment, but has previously touted christianity as the one true religion from his government seat. You have to ask if he is going to uphold the first amendment, or simply push christianity any way he can. The fist protects his religion, but does it protect yours? From a guy who demonstrateshis religious tolerance by basically jsut saying jews are ok because they are really part of christianity, I'm not getting a good feeling about that subject.
When he admits that in an economy shifting to a service base, the largest part of the service economy may be healthcare over the next 20 years, then goes on to say things will be cheaper and that part of the economy will be stronger by regulating the hell out of them, you have to question his sanity. Not to mention that it is unclear from his stance if he intends to increase or decrease federal subsidy of the healthcare industry. But even without that, regulating the IT infrastructure of healthcare, and then changing those specs before the industry has even achieved compliance is not a cost saving measure. Someone is paying it, and in the end that boils down to you and me vi premiums, taxes, or bigger doctor bills.
When you have a guy who has gotten all preachy about sexuality, sexual conduct, and moral behavior who runs around having affairs, it doesn't give you warm fuzzies that he is a man of integrity who wouldn't force a law down your throat unless he was willing to abide by it himself.
Then you have his strongest attributes, which is a general consistency of promoting fiscal conservatism. However, with his helthcare reform stance fairly nebulous, it's unclear if he's planning on shoving a huge portion of the economy further under government control and at the mercy of the government purse. Having the health of the federal budget represent an even larger slice of the GDP than it already does doesn't jibe with his seemingly conservative fiscal plan.
A Republican with a message that they will save the world by saving money and no real plan to make savings isn't any more realistic than a Democrat with with a message they will save the world by spending money without any plan on where to get the funds. Both piss people off while undermining any credibility they may have. Fiscally, he espouses a good attitude, but not a lot of substance to back it up. Combine that with his history of not exactly practicing what he preaches or being a man of deep conviction on most of the subjects he makes noises about, and it doesn't buy him much cachet.
On top of that, he automatically inherits every problem of the bush administration. The abortion issue form bush gets amplified with newt's history as the prototype for the current "neocon" agenda in the eyes of mass media. Even deliberately looking, I can't find a good answer on his RKBA stance, which means there's a large base of issue voters who won't be swayed by his nomination, so he is entirely hoping one assumes he is the lesser of two evils. If the upcoming congressional elections go well for RKBA as far as seats, perception of the importance of the presidency may change. By being a Republican he is autmotaically wrong on the war to about half the population.
In realtiy, the race is less likely to be about issues than about the person. Newt is not a strong runner in that environment.
Honestly, the only positive thing I can say about the guy as a person is that when he took his lumps on conduct during hearings and on his sister, he drew a line and stood his gorund even if it didn't look good for him or favor his interests.
Admitting wrongdoing with dignity and loving your family more than your public image only get you so far when you sit back and ask "what problems is this guy going to cause for ME."