ash loves it. A Republican engages in illegal – not to mention immoral – behavior, and it’s the Democrats’ fault for pointing it out.
Democrats should run on the issues for a change
In the wake of a sad and disgusting event where a grown man, Rep. Mark Foley, took advantage of a child, leave it to the Democrats to use it to their advantage.
Nancy Pelosi rushed to Florida to make a speech saying that Republicans are shaking in their boots and they will be hurt in the polls. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Democrats could simply run campaigns based upon, say, issues instead of scandals? Can’t you people get votes on your own? Why would you throw something like this into the media and say, “Looky what they did,” when in reality, one man made a terrible mistake and will be punished?
How completely pathetic is it that people will go to the polls thinking, “bad Republicans,” because of the spin placed on this tragic event. If that’s the case, then every Democrat is a bad-check-writing drunk who runs their car into a lake with their mistress secretary inside, while not moving to the governor’s mansion and taking an entire fleet of state police to California to hold their hairbrush.
Get real, people! Pay attention to issues and smokescreens. If you can find a Democratic candidate who has a platform based on the real issues of our country, more power to you and good luck with that.
Conservatives really are too easy.
No. It’s not about homosexuality. It’s not about Clinton, whose Monica situation isn’t even comparable. It’s not about a Democratic plot (there is no version of Karl Rove in the opposition party). It’s not about an attempt to throw the upcoming election (see no Rove equivalent). It’s not about alcoholism (though the conservative mantra about personal accountability does come to mind). It’s not about Congressional pages setting up former Representative Mark Foley and the solution certainly isn’t to gut the page program. It’s not about the alleged liberal media and it’s absolutely not about liberal hypocrisy.
If you think it’s any of the above, then turn off FOX, tune out Rush, and purge your brain of that complicated, convoluted hooey. Here’s what it’s about:
It’s about a guy in a position of authority (Foley) who couldn’t control his urge to abuse children. It’s about his supervisors (Dennis Hastert et. al.) who, rather than penalize Foley, tried to contain the information and wish Foley’s behavior away. Since it nevertheless became a scandal, it’s now about a guy (Hastert) who not only favors the well-being of Republicans over that of the country, but salvages his position at the expense of his party.
It’s that simple and it’s also that immutable. Spin all you like, but the damage has been done. That damage is severe and no amount of distraction from those responsible will work this time.
So someone else takes a whack at the debate:
Same problems, but a different party
Well, ash finally went too far, and I had to write. She did get some things right, though.
The Foley affair is not about homosexuality. And it is not about alcoholism. And it is about a guy in a position of authority who couldn't control his urge to abuse a 17-year-old child. And it is not comparable to the Clinton/Monica situation since Clinton actually did have sex with his intern whereas Foley seems to be a guy who wanted to follow the lead of his president and was too inept to pull it off.
But come on now - "there is no version of Karl Rove in the opposition party?" Just out of curiosity, perhaps she'll tell us who she thinks fabricated the "official" Texas Air National Guard records and delivered them to CBS a week before the last presidential election.
And "not an attempt to throw the upcoming election?" Why did ABC wait until October to break the story about the e-mails it possessed since April? And no "liberal hypocrisy?" I guess I missed the Democrat outcry when the Massachusetts congressman was caught in the act with a much younger male page.
Or when one of our former presidents (see Clinton/Monica above) granted a presidential pardon, on his last day in office, for former Chicago congressman Mel Reynolds, who had been convicted and sent to prison for sexual activities with an underaged female volunteer worker in his home office. But maybe Mel wasn't a "guy in a position of authority."
And pay more attention to the news, please, or at least stop ignoring the news that doesn't fit your preconceived ideas. The family of the 17-year-old child in question has confirmed that it asked congressman Shimkus to not take any action that would bring the matter to the public's attention. Was he covering up or was he showing compassion for the family by honoring its request?
Oh, ya, almost forgot. It's not immutable because the public's perception is already changing.
ash wrote this rebuttal in a coma:
I stand by my previous remarks. There is no Karl Rove functionary in the Democratic Party. Call it self-evident, a truism, or a simple definition. Anyone willing to stoop so low and play so dirty as Mr. Rove has, too many times to count, wouldn’t BE a Democrat. He or she would be a Republican.
As for the rest of the correspondent’s attempts to deflect and dissemble, that’s the beauty of the Foley scandal. It’s so inherently compelling and transparently clear that anyone daring to engage in irrelevant if not phony comparisons has lost the game before he or she made the argument. In fact, the Republicans and their official and unofficial surrogates lost this battle in the long war between the parties before the first rebuttal emerged from the first mouth. Some know it and, apparently, some still don’t.
And in case it hasn’t occurred to the conservative readers of these pages, the story immediately advanced from the crime itself to the cover-up. A strictly Republican enterprise that is, for which the Republicans involved have yet to exercise the responsibility they claim to own.