Random Output
The Foley Follies:
10/16/2006
There is so much so funny to be said about the recent Foley scandal, most of it coming from the mouths of conservative republicans. And when is comes to spin, few can blow harder than Rush Limbaugh. Rush suggested that the recent resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), which came after allegations that Foley sent inappropriate emails to a 16-year-old male congressional page, was a "set ... up" "coordinated" by the Democrats.
Right....
Rush is spinning again, but then we could expect that from him. And as usual Limburger either doesn't know what he's talking about or is lying his pill popping ass off. Brian Ross of ABC broke the story (though two newspapers were in the hunt too) and has directly addressed the question, which was reported in the NY Times.
Mr. Ross dismissed suggestions by some Republicans that the news was disseminated as part of a smear campaign against Mr. Foley. "I hate to give up sources, but to the extent that I know the political parties of any of the people who helped us, it would be the same party," Mr. Ross said, referring to Republicans.
BTW: The spin really is funny. Even Matt Drudge (alleged to be gay himself) on his radio show tried floating the balloon that the little beasts tempted Foley into his bad behavior. Blame the victim, as usual. Tony Snow, usually a bright guy suffered a brown out when he tried to spin Foley's emails to teenage pages as "simply naughty e-mails." Faux News (Fox), gotta give them credit, they knew there isn't any good spin on this mess and settled for a lie. They put up Foley's picture and labeled him as a democrat from Florida.
Eugene Robinson, columnist put it best when he wrote "There's really no effective spin you can put on the Foley scandal, no way that even the Republican Party's image-making geniuses can make people feel good about a 52-year-old man discussing masturbatory techniques with a male teenager via instant message."
You know what really scares republicans? This little story truly exposes the hear no evil, see no evil, know no evil mode of operation the republicans use when dealing with their own. For example how Hastert himself became 2,000,000.00 dollars richer overnight thanks to a provision neatly slid into an transportation bill. Considering the outrage over we heard over Hillary's pork barrel trading netting 100,000.00 dollars, why haven't we heard a peep about Hastert's land speculation deals?
Now there is a lot of people for who accept the corruption and cronyism as politics as usual. Others simply don't pay much attention unless it's big, it impacts them or it's something they can relate to. They live with it because it doesn't hit home.
But everyone can understand Foley was a pervert and it hits home because they have brothers, sisters or children of their own. And sadly for Republican's everyone understands the GOP party leadership either knew or turned a blind eye to the situation.
And it's starting to look like they had every reason to know.
Foley's former chief of staff said in an Associated Press interview that he first warned Hastert's aides more than three years ago that Foley's behavior toward pages was troublesome. That was long before GOP leaders acknowledged learning of the problem. Kirk Fordham, who was Foley's top aide until January 2004, said he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene" several years ago.
What is killing the Republicans isn't Foley though... in reality Foley was the last straw of a big pile of straw crushing the GOP elephant. Bob Ney, Claude Allen, John Jack Abramoff, Randall Harold Duke Cunningham, Tom Noe, Michael Brown, Jeff Gannon, James Tobin, Bob Taft, David H. Safavian, Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Those straws are events too... like Korean nukes, record breaking national debt, record breaking trade deficits, Warrant-less Wire Taps, Medicare Prescription-Drug Plan, a blotched Katrina response, Abu Ghraib, Iraq contractor fraud, Iraq WMDs, Terry Schrivo, K-Street, outing a CIA agent, voting irregularities of every sort and the failure to catch Bin Lauden.
But Foley just brought it all home when you add in the failure to take responsibility. When Hastert, Limbaugh and the rest of the party and it's pundits fumbled the ball.
Why is it 6 years after Bill Clinton left office the gut reaction is to blame Clinton, even though both houses of Congress have been under Republican control since the mid 90s? Because Republicans can't take responsibility, they can only pass blame.