[Ed. note: We break into our countdown of top videos for a few notable videos of the past 24 hours]
Here we have Republican Newt Gingrich tearing up as he recalls times with his mother, who struggled with mental illness and died of cancer in 2003 - or - here we have Republican Newt Gingrich desperately trying to save his floundering campaign by crying a couple of days before voting starts. Your call.
"You'll get me all teary-eyed, Callista will tell you, I get teary-eyed every time we sing Christmas carols. My mother sang in the choir and loved singing in the choir," Gingrich said, referring to his wife, as he fought back tears.
"But I identify my mother with being happy, loving life, having a sense of joy in her friends, but what she introduced me to, is late in her life she ended up in a long-term-care facility. She had bipolar disease, and depression, and she gradually acquired some physical ailments, and that introduced me to the issue of long-term care, which I did with Bob Kerrey for three years, and that introduced me to the issue of Alzheimers, which I did with Bob Kerrey for three more years, and my whole emphasis on brain science comes indirectly from dealing with the real problems of real people in my family," the former House Speaker continued, at moments stopping to cry.
The audience sympathetically cheered for Gingrich as he spoke about his mother.
"I do policy much easier than I do personal," Gingrich joked.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz asked how his mother would react if she was at the event Friday, Gingrich said she would have been working the crowd.
"She'd be talking to all these people, and she'd be telling them how nice I was," Gingrich said to laughter.
[Video via TPM]
