Breaking news: Newt Gingrich, apparently setting up his 2008 presidential bid, has finally admitted that he was having an extramarital affair with a congressional aide 20 years younger than he was, and that this was going on in 1998, when he was ramming through impeachment hearings on Bill Clinton.

But he says that he should not be considered a hypocrite. Why not? Because Clinton committed the crime of perjury in his extramarital affair.

Conservatives always bring this up to show how their own extramarital affairs are not as bad as Clinton’s, but they always lack the depth of conviction necessary to give them the moral high ground. First off, the tests are very different: Gingrich, for example, was not sued and put under oath and then asked about his sexual dalliances, which, if answered truthfully, could end his career. Had he been in that situation and then answered truthfully in full public view, then he would have the moral high ground. But to press for a president to be impeached for lying about an affair when he was having an affair and lying about it himself is nothing but hypocritical; that Clinton lied under oath about it is not part of the equation because Gingrich never faced the same situation. Moreover, Gingrich had multiple affairs before that aide, one of whom reported that Gingrich preferred getting blow jobs so he could deny “having sex with that woman.”

The second circumstance that sheds a different light on the matter is the nature of the legal case against Clinton. Put simply, the entire Paula Jones lawsuit was a sham, a major abuse of the legal system which was instigated for a single purpose: to politically assassinate the President’s character, to attack him using the courts as a bludgeon.

The Paula Jones case began under the flimsiest of pretenses: some obscure, little-read right-wing rag published the initials “PJ” in speaking about one of Clinton’s affairs, and Jones claimed that since she was then outed, she had no choice but to sue Clinton for sexual harassment. From the beginning, Jones’ legal team consisted of and was financed by conservatives; one of the members of her team was none other than Ann Coulter. Right-wing fingerprints are all over the case from start to end.

While Democrats agreeably appoint Republicans to prosecute Republicans so as to maintain a sense of objectivity, Republicans gleefully appoint Republican attack dogs to prosecute cases against Democrats. Kenneth Starr was the worst sort, using all manner of illicit ways and means to take on the Clinton case, from using legal blackmail to elicit false accusations against Clinton (for which Susan McDougal went to prison because she refused to lie) to leaking embarrassing details all over the media in clear violation of legal ethics.

In the end, the incident where Clinton lied under oath was the ultimate “Gotcha” moment, the essence of entrapment. When the prosecution found proof that Clinton had an affair with Lewinski, they did not release it–instead, that proof quietly in hand, they set Clinton up for perjury. Seriously–if there is any sitting politician who is having an affair which they can still deny, where the admission would cause them great harm, is there any possibility that the politician will admit to it, even under oath? One can be certain that Gingrich would have lied about it. And in the entire legal proceedings after 9/11, Bush and Cheney adamantly refused to be put under oath because they knew they could get charged with perjury for the lies they planned to tell. Clinton’s was simply forced to make the lie while under oath in a sham trial, a distinction that is entirely technical in nature, having nothing whatsoever to do with morality. Clinton was wrong for lying, but the mitigating circumstances were about as strong as one could possibly imagine, which is why so many people never saw it as a big deal.

So for Gingrich to admit to his affair a decade after the fact, for him never to have been under the pressure of being under oath, never having faced the choice of committing perjury or losing his career, to say he wasn’t hypocritical… well, it’s pretty damn shameless.

And let’s not forget that that affair was not the only sin committed by this “family values” champion. He married his high school Math teacher, whom he would later ask for a divorce as she lay in a hospital bed with cancer. He had many extramarital affairs, and divorced his second wife by telephoning her on Mother’s Day. And now he wants Christians to like him because he’s an evangelical and should be forgiven his (multitudinous) sins.

In a way, I hope that Gingrich becomes the front-runner and wins the Republican nomination. Any candidate in the Democratic field would wipe the floor with him. And it’s not such an impossibility, either–Gingrich is a favorite of the evangelic crowd, the Republican base; look what they did to McCain in 2000 in order to get their boy Bush in the lead.

It is also incredibly hypocritical for three Republican favorites–McCain, Giuliani, and Gingrich–to be vying for the family-values Christian vote when all three had extramarital affairs and divorces. But then, as we saw with all of the sins and crimes that George Bush committed before running for president, you can sin all you want so long as you praise Jesus and ask for forgiveness when you’re finally caught.

And that’s not hypocritical, is it?