DeLay Explains How His Adultery Was Different Than Gingrich's In the book, DeLay criticizes Gingrich for, among other things, conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. (The woman later became Gingrich's third wife.) "Yes, I don't think that Newt could set a high moral standard, a high moral tone, during that moment," DeLay said. "You can't do that if you're keeping secrets about your own adulterous affairs." He added that the impeachment trial was another of his "proudest moments." The difference between his own adultery and Gingrich's, he said, "is that I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There's a big difference." He added, "Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/05/29/delay-explains-how-his-ad_n_49824.html
I'll leave the moral judgments to others, but in a way Newt was betraying his followers as badly as Clinton was betraying the country. The most damning argument against Clinton was the potential that he could be blackmailed, say by the Chinese. OK, he had already given them the store, so say by the Israelis. Newt was himself vulnerable to blackmail. Of course, the Clintons would never stoop to anything like that, would they? Perhaps a smart guy like newt got regularly outmaneuvered by Clinton just because his attention was somewhere else.