It's About Power

Newt Gingrich won in South Carolina, carrying most of the evangelical/fundamentalist voters concerned about 'family values'. His personal life, of course, is reprehensible.

The two don't contradict each other at all on a deeper level. Bertrand Russell said that the Catholic Church loves hypocrisy, in that the act of hypocrisy recognises and cements the Church's power rather than challenge it. Wilhelm Reich's 'Mass Psychology of Fascism' and Erich Fromm's 'Escape From Freedom' explored fascism from a psychoanalytic point of view, as, amongst other things, a confluence of power and sexuality. The astounding psychosexual carnival that successive scandals involving fundamentalists and right wing politicians have afforded us can be understood in these terms.

So, Gingrich, who's led an entirely despicable personal life, becomes the candidate of family values, and Obama, whose personal and family life is exemplary, is bitterly opposed. It isn't about family life. It's about power, holding on to power, reversing the process of sharing it with others thought unworthy of it.