Appalled, I tells ya.
How DARE the "leftist" media bring up his cheating on his wives (plural). How DARE such an unseemly subject be introduced into such a profoundly serious and solemn undertaking as a Presidential debate. How DARE someone ruin the genteel decorum painstakingly constructed by the Very Serious People assembled on the stage. How DARE anyone ask him a sexual question that's none of their fucking business in the first place.
I'm getting to be a bit of an old-timer and my memory tends to get hazy at times, but isn't this the same gasbag blowhard who led the impeachment proceedings against a sitting President over a sexual act? Isn't this the same gasbag blowhard who had no problems with any issues of decorum while discussing oral sex with anyone who would listen for years? Isn't this the same gasbag blowhard who once vowed he'd never give another political speech in his life without referencing Clinton's infidelity? Isn't this the same gasbag blowhard who happily wasted $50,000,000 of taxpayer's money investigating someone else's sex life? Isn't this the same gasbag blowhard who was in the middle of an 8-year affair with a staff member while attempting to remove a President from office for the same thing?
Now I think King made a couple of mistakes on how he handled this, but it had been the Big Story for the day or two leading up to the debate. For him not to address it would have been an abdication of his duty. He made a mistake by leading off with it. I'd have sat on it till the end and framed it completely differently.
And that leads to mistake #2 by King. The framing of it. There was none. He merely asked Gingrich if he'd like to respond to the allegations. By not being specific he allowed the guy to not only completely ignore his rank hypocrisy, it allowed him to play the victim card and blame the media, a tactic the right-wing adores. See: Palin, Sarah.
Here's how I'd have brought up the issue: I'd point out that since he thinks gay folks threaten not only the sanctity of marriage, but the very institution of it itself, how are homosexuals responsible for his serial cheating and for the destruction of the sanctity of his marriages (plural)?
He'd likely hork forth his canned response that he's been "forgiven" for his "mistakes" and it's time to just "move on." (This is the Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card played by almost all sanctimonious Christians when they're caught doing the very behavior they've condemned others for doing.) But I'd make him, or at least try to, address his own specific hypocrisy. I'd have never given him an open-ended forum to dodge and pontificate. King blew it and now the issue is pretty much dead as Gingrich will maintain that this "has already been covered" and any further queries are simply more evidence that the "liberal" media is just victimizing him again.
But that's fine with me as I'm pulling for the guy in the long run. If he somehow manages to secure the nomination (which I still don't think he will), Obama will beat him like a rented mule and the Democrats will win big on the down-ballot elections.
I just don't understand how a political party which makes it its business to concern themselves with other people's sexual activities, can so easily develop a case of selective amnesia and demand that this mutt receive a pass for even discussing his hypocrisy.