If only there was someone who could better express my confusion and shock at this:

Gingrich had to be gleeful when he heard that on the eve of the South Carolina primary election, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced he is dropping out of the 2012 presidential race following his not-so-stellar showings in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Then there was an extra piece of good news for Gingrich when Perry endorsed Gingrich’s campaign.  Gingrich had to be thinking that that if he does well in the second South Carolina debate, he might close what little gap remains between himself and Mitt Romney, turning the southern state’s primary event into what some are calling a “barn burner!”

All that good news could mean nothing, though, now that Marianne Gingrich – Ex-Mrs. Newt Gingrich Number 2 – has come out with a “tell all” and “explosive” interview with ABC News.  Marianne Gingrich has made no secret of the fact that she’s not sure her ex-husband would make a good president.  She said so in an Esquire Magazine interview a couple of years ago.  The devastating bomb in the interview is this — Marianne Gingrich claims that while she was still married to Newt, he wanted to have an “open marriage.”  Such a quaint term for wanting to be able to stay married but also to sleep around.

As Gingrich’s adult daughters defend their dad and do their best to keep the focus away from his serial infidelities, and calling on people to ignore their ex-stepmother, James Dobson of Focus on the Family is doing the opposite.  He proclaimed this weekend at the Christian Right Summit that conservative voters aren’t ready to see a First Lady in the White House who was a mistress for eight years.  That might not be a campaign breaker in some states, but about 60 percent of Republican voters in South Carolina consider themselves to be evangelical Christians, so many of them are tuned into Dobson’s comments.

So now the GOP presidential race is down to four major candidates – Romney, Gingrich, Rick Santorum – who learned today that he was the real winner in the Iowa Caucuses – and Ron Paul.  I’d say that maybe the very good day really goes to Santorum, who snatched the Iowa win from Romney and now is bound to make hay out of Gingrich’s personal life in hopes of a South Carolina win.

A version of this post was originally written for iVillage.com, where I’ll be working some amazing people on 2012 election coverage!

What does bother me a lot, though, is the money shot we so often see of the wives of philandering politicians — standing by the side of their husbands, trying to show solidarity and the apparently elusive family values that so many of them talk about before they get caught doing something, well, not so family values-like.

Why do I care? Because sooner rather than later, my nine-year-old daughter is going to start watching more news and she’ll see these women who have decided that even though their husbands have done something terrible to them, and to their families, there is still an obligation to stick with them. Personal decisions aside, it just seems that visual is the rule rather than the exception, these days. And the message it sends to our kids is that it’s OK for husbands to wander and that wives will still stick around, regardless of how badly they’ve been betrayed.

That is, until Jenny Sanford.

You had to guess that there was something up with the story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his quick “decision” to change his trip from the Appalachian Trail to Buenos Aires! When the truth came out, as it always does, it was refreshing not to see his wife at his side, silently condoning what he’d done and the lies he had told.

That’s the example I want my daughter to see. Not that there isn’t a time and place for forgiveness, but I hate it when these Masters of the Universe get caught and we have to see their wives standing next to them, telling the world implicitly that what happened was OK.

Jenny Sanford is the example I want our children to learn from. She’s a strong woman in her own right, apparently gave her husband a chance to make things right when she learned about his affair and when he didn’t, there was no big scene — she just did what she knew she had to do for herself, her children and her own life.

Jenny Sanford was apparently instrumental in making Mark Sanford the political success he is today. According to the Washington Post, when asked about what the South Carolina governor was going to do now without her advice, she responded:

“His career is not a concern of mine. … He’s going to have to worry about that. I’m worried about my family and the character of my children.”

That’s a pretty refreshing response from a political spouse these days. It’s given me hope that in the future there will be space for the aggrieved spouse (’cause you know it’s going to happen again) to choose something other than the “standing by your man” photo op and sending a message that sometimes it’s better to do what’s right for your own life, regardless of the political consequences.