How to Sell Your Divorce to Values Voters

Like Newt Gingrich, former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer is on his third marriage. But Roemer has a unique strategy for explaining his marital history.

Byron York has a hilarious account of Buddy Roemer's speech to the Faith and Freedom coalition in Waukee, Iowa. The former Louisiana governor is running for the Republican presidential nomination, but he has a problem. Like Newt Gingrich, he's on his third marriage. But whereas Gingrich deals with the issue by passing lightly over his marital history, Roemer has opted for a very different strategy: he has redesignated his marital history a feature rather than a bug.

'I'm honored to be with you in Iowa in faith and freedom,' Roemer told the crowd. 'I've always been a churchgoing Methodist boy, from a cotton field in north Louisiana.  After a long period as a divorced man, 12 years, I remarried some 10 years ago.  I married the piano player in a church next door to my own. Scarlett.  Thank you, Jesus.'

'So I now go to First Methodist Church nearly every Sunday,' Roemer continued.  'Sit in the balcony and then as the final hymn is sung, I sneak out and go to the chapel on the campus at LSU and sit with my wife and occasionally the piano.  Faith and freedom, I'm honored to be invited.'

If those Iowans did not know the meaning of the word "chutzpah" yesterday - they know it now.

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