The perfect ending..(I am always surprised when these pricks can be so callous toward the situations of others fall to pieces when it come to them personally)

Newt Gingrich cries when asked about his mom

By

Brian Montopoli

Topics

Campaign 2012

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UPDATED 2:45 p.m. ET
DES MOINES -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich broke down in tears when asked about his mother at a campaign stop at a coffee shop here Friday.
Asked by pollster and Republican consultant Frank Luntz talk about a "special moment" he remembers about his late mother, Gingrich first responded, "first of all, you're going to get me all teary-eyed - Callista will tell you, I get teary-eyed every time we send Christmas cards."
He then started crying, prompting many in the audience - made up mostly of mothers - to say, "awww." Luntz is known for asking questions to get answers based on emotion, telling PBS' Frontline in 2003 that 80 percent of life is emotion to intellect's 20 percent.
"But, uh -- excuse me - my mother sang in the choir," he said, speaking over a crying baby in the audience. "And loved singing in the choir. And I don't know if I should admit this, but when I was very young, she made me sing in the choir."
He went on to discuss how his mother, Kathleen Gingrich, is someone who he remembers "loving life" and "having a sense of joy in her friends." He then talked about how she lived in a long-term care facility toward the end of her life, which led him to emphasize brain science and other issues in his public life.
As he talked about what he called "the real problems of real people in my family," he began crying again. Gingrich's comments prompted enthusiastic applause from the audience. Later, one of his daughters brought him a tissue to wipe his eyes.
Gingrich went on to discuss how his mother spent "27 years as an army wife" as part of a culture that valued patriotism and duty. He said that if his mother were here today he would tell her he would "do everything I can as a candidate to be worthy of ourselves."

Newt Gingrich wipes away a tear while speaking about his deceased mother during a question and answer forum put together by Moms Matter 2012 at Java Joe's, a coffee shop, on December 30, 2011 in Des Moines, Iowa.

(Credit: Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Before she died, the Daily Beast reported last week, Kathleen Gingrich discussed how she "almost didn't survive" her difficult years raising Newt and Gingrich's violent stepfather, saying she "had manic-depressive illness."
Gingrich's remarks came at the end of an hour long question and answer session with about 150 Iowa mothers at Java Joe's coffeeshop in Des Moines. It was his second stop of the day on his campaign tour around Iowa ahead of the January 3 caucuses.
Earlier in the question and answer session with Iowa mothers, Gingrich was asked to convince the audience that his claimed personality change after two divorces and a history of infidelity reflect a "fundamental change of the heart and not just political talk."