Republican Stupidity

Completing the circle for recent Republican disasters, the president weighs in:

Bush expressed confidence in [Hastert]’s ability to resolve the matter, calling him a “father, teacher, coach.”

“I know Denny Hastert. I meet with him a lot. He is a father, teacher, coach who cares about the children of this country,” Bush said. “I know that he wants all the facts to come out.”

[…] “I know that he wants all the facts to come out and he wants to ensure that these children up there on Capitol Hill are protected,” the president said. “I’m confident he will provide whatever leadership he can to law enforcement in this investigation.”

Heckuva job.

DenniePost + Comments (12)

Below I suggested (via Hilzoy) that Mark Foley Chief of Staff turned Tom Reynolds Chief of Staff turned Mark Foley Harvey Keitel figure Kirk Fordham must have gotten permission from his current employer before freelancing on behalf of his former employer. The NRCC chair’s chief of staff went scandalously AWOL in the middle of a fierce battle for his majority’s survival? Come on.

Via Aravosis and hot off one of the most embarrassing press conferences in modern history, Reynolds claims (video link) that Fordham went AWOL.

So now the buck is in Fordham’s lap. What do you think will be his story?

The Fordham FolliesPost + Comments (8)

Since the Foley issue is a big deal, and people want answers to these serious questions, I have a modest proposal.

Let’s waterboard Foley, Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds, and all of their aides, as well as anyone else in the GOP leadership. After all, they all voted for it, it is the best way to get answers (really! Dean Barnett said so!), and it isn’t like it is torture.

I support this immediate intelligence gathering operation. The safety of our children hinges on our ability to ‘ask questions.’

*** Update ***

According to commenters, John Aravosis has already come up with this idea. Suffice it to say, if John Aravosis and I are on the same sheet of music, I am so far off the GOP reservation I might as well be blogging from France.

A Modest ProposalPost + Comments (51)

1.) Gateway Pundit has the real culprit in the Foley scandal:

John Aravosis, along with fellow radical gay activist Mike Rogers, worked in tandem but not together, to out members of Congress. Mike Rogers wrote about Foley’s get togethers with young men less than half his age but held on to the information until recently like he said he would do back in March of 2005.

2.) Hugh Hewitt says Hastert should dig in and fight back:

The Washington Times wants Speaker Hastert to resign. To do so would be to capitulate to Democratic-activist-induced and MSM-abetted hysteria. Not only should Hastert not resign, he should use every opportunity to swing back hard at a MSM deeply compromised by its ideological extremism and a Democratic Party committed to retreat and defeat in Iraq and fecklessness in the war generally. If Republican candidates recognize that the “clamor” is just the echo chamber, they’ll quickly come to understand that this is another Wellstone Memorial Service moment, when the left has persuaded itself that the American electorate is stupid and easily stampeded, and where overreaching appeals to emotional and unjust conclusions cannot be sustained in the new media environment.

*** Irony Alert ***

Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists’ strike against this country.
Sixty-nine percent in a Washington Post poll published Saturday said they believe it is likely the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda. A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe it’s likely Saddam was involved.

The belief in the connection persists even though there has been no proof of a link between the two.

A stupid and easily stampeded electorate has served the GOP quite well, methinks.

3.) Apparently, Newt Gingrich reads Tom Maguire:

Discussing the recent resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) with host Chris Wallace on the October 1 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday, Fox News political analyst and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) claimed that House Republicans would have “been accused of gay bashing” if they had “overly aggressively reacted” to Foley’s allegedly inappropriate email communications with a 16-year-old male congressional page when House Republicans reportedly first learned of Foley’s actions in late 2005.

So has the Opinion Journal:

But in today’s politically correct culture, it’s easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts’ decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where’s Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

Let’s give credit where it is due- Just One Minute came up with this first, last week:

However, picture this headline – “House Leadership Boots Allegedly Gay Republican On Trumped-Up Pedophilia Charges”. Ugly. Worth Avoiding. Listening to Andrew Sullivan decry the homophobes in the House would not have been worth it. So they played it a bit too cautiously and slowly and here we are.

Maybe these hysterical bleatings would have been more plausible if this hadn’t been the de facto party line for the GOP for the past ten years:

Republicans are prepared to oppose homosexual “marriage” in their national platform, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said yesterday.

“There is a lot of energy out there, a lot of concern about gay marriage,” Mr. Gillespie said. “So it wouldn’t surprise me if it were addressed in some form or fashion in the platform.”

He accused homosexual activists of intolerance and bigotry by attempting to force the rest of the population to accept alien moral standards. As a result, “tolerance is no longer defined as my accepting people for who they are,” the RNC chairman said.

You can count on the Republicans to be weak, craven, corrupt, and a lot of things. Afraid of the homosexual lobby just isn’t one of them.

4.) The Strata-Sphere has found another culprit- the media:

While the quivering right demands Hastert’s resignation (wrongly) the real news is being under reported and missed. And that is that Brian Ross of ABC News now says he knew of the possible crimes against children as far back as August of last year and did nothing.

Brian Ross of ABC News said he learned about the e-mail messages in August but was too busy with Hurricane Katrina and the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to pursue them immediately.

That excuse is pure BS! First off, he had evidence of possible child abuse and that should have been reported to law enforcement – not held for some story line. And second, what was wrong with dealing with this in October – after those events he sited? What about November? Why not in December? What was so pressing in January? Why did he not do something to stop a predator in February? What was more important than this in March? Couldn’t he find the time in April of this year? Surely he had time in May or June? Nothing could be done in July and August? Was it Katrina and 9-11 AGAIN that knocked any chances of stopping a child abuse again this September? Ross planted this story with the help of Mike Rogers. Mike Rogers admits he worked to have this story timed. And it is strange how the information was planted on some know-nothing website and picked up magically by Ross. What, did the out of the way website remind Ross crimes were possibly being committed that he learned about a year earlier and he should do something?

Too bad Dan Rather is retired. I bet he had something to do with this too!

5.) Finally, Red State has figured out the best way to handle this situation:

Right now, however, we must fight. We must fight like our lives depend on it. Make no mistake, the timing of the Foley allegations were not designed to persuade swing voters to vote Democrat. They allegations were designed to suppress the GOP turnout. We must not let the Democrats be successful at this.

While we know the GOP is far from perfect and, under Denny Hastert’s recent leadership, has been a disappointment, we know the Democrats would cut all funding from Iraq, unleash investigative hordes on the President, and block all tax reforms and social security reforms.

Now is not the time to get comfortable with the notion of Speaker Pelosi. Now is the time to fight. Call your local GOP candidate. Walk neighborhoods and work phone banks. And then contribute cold hard cash to some good Republicans who need your help.

Translation- “Sure- we want to bugger your kids and won’t do anything about it as long as it doesn’t cause waves or threaten our one party rule. But Nancy Pelosi and company are worse, and if the terrorists kill your kids, who cares if GOP congressmen are diddling them? Send us some cash so we can keep your kids alive and fondled.”

*** Update ***

6.) Mark Noonan, blogging at “GOP Bloggers- Blogging for the Majority,” has figured out who is to blame. All of us!

Usefully, this scandal brings up the entire issue of sexual morality in the United States. For far too long we have taken a cavalier attitude towards sexual matters, and because we have become jaded people like Foley are able to slip under the social radar for quite a long time. Fortunately, Foley was discovered before he could actually do something terrible – but we escaped such a thing by the skin of our teeth, as it were. Our recourse in this is to more firmly adhere to the tried and true morality on such matters – to assert and defend the concept that sex is a matter for a married couple and anyone who strays outside of this should be brought in to the glare of public scruitiny and condemnation.

Don’t you get it? If sex were limited to a missionary style sex acts between a husband and wife (but purely for procreation- no pleasure allowed), then our Congressional Republicans might not have been so jaded about sex and might have actually done something about their colleague hitting on kids. But because some of us refuse to adhere to Noonan’s cultish pseudo-morality regarding sex, and, alas, we are forbidden to stone homosexuals and don’t have enough red letter A’s, we all enabled Foley to feast on our kids. It’s so simple! Maybe because a simpleton said it.

If only Florida had passed a ban on non-marital sex and had banned dildo sales, this could have been avoided. I say Mark Noonan and company should get right on that.

7.) I won’t even bother with specific links, as they are too numerous to categorize, but we will extend special honorable mention to anyone who mentions the Clenis and Lewinsky, Barney Frank, or Gerry Studds/Dan Crane.

Fondlegate Update: Dead-Ender EditionPost + Comments (45)

The Washington Times calls for him to resign:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week’s revelations — or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

They do throw in a couple pieces of tomfoolery, such as this:

Now the scandal must unfold on the front pages of the newspapers and on the television screens, as transcripts of lewd messages emerge and doubts are rightly raised about the forthrightness of the Republican stewards of the 109th Congress. Some Democrats are attempting to make this “a Republican scandal,” and they shouldn’t; Democrats have contributed more than their share of characters in the tawdry history of congressional sexual scandals. Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and partisan hues, in institutions within and without government.

This is a Republican scandal, through and through, and pretending otherwise is an act of foolishness. My favorite part of the editorial is this:

A special, one-day congressional session should elect a successor. We nominate Rep. Henry Hyde, also of Illinois, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee whose approaching retirement ensures that he has no dog in this fight. He has a long and principled career, and is respected on both sides of the aisle. Mr. Hyde would preside over the remaining three months of the 109th Congress in a manner best suited for a full and exhaustive investigation until a new speaker for the 110th Congress is elected in January, who can assume responsibility for the investigation.

Who better to lead the current corrupt GOP than the man who, after publicly excoriating Clinton for his affairs, had to publicly admit to his own ‘youthful indiscretions?’ I agree with the Washington Times- this party is so thoroughly rotten that the best new congressional leader for the Republicans should be a hypocritical disgraced adulterer. After all, if the shoe fits…

Buh-bye HastertPost + Comments (93)

Welcome aboard the dissident Republican ship, Ace:

I don’t need the goddamned Republican Party in power to sign “peace” deals with terrorists. I can get that easily enough from the Democratic Party. I’ve supported these vacuous, cowardly, inept, corrupt motherfuckers for one fucking reason– to fight terrorists.

if they want to sign peace deals with them, that’s their decision. I and others can make another decision. The country may move in this direction, but we hardly have to endorse the decision by voting in favor of Quislings.

At least the Democrats talk tough about sending more troops to Afghanistan and killing Taliban fighters and capturing bin Ladin.

If that really is no longer a GOP prirority, then I am no longer a member of the GOP.

You stupid assholes. You’ve done just about everything possible to lose this election; it’s only the base — ever hopeful and ever self-deluding — that’s kept you from your goal.

Was governing too much a chore for you? Was it too distracting, taking you away from fundraisers and fucking Congressional pages?

I am under no illusion that Ace and I share the same ideas about the large number of the issues that have pushed me away from the GOP- go through his archives and mine and you will notice some pretty clear and non-negotiable differences of opinions regarding any number of topics. I will go so far as to say that Ace probably thinks I am a total asshole for some of the things I support that he disagrees with. But where we do agree is that this current Republican party is corrupt, without values, without a clear agenda other than the naked pursuit of power, without consicence, and wholly unworthy of our support. They have betrayed everything they claimed to stand for, and they have betrayed me, Ace, and hundreds of thousands of other supporters.

The time has come. I am fully in favor of someone elses party fucking up the country for a few years. At least then I won’t have to contort myself into a pretzel defending the indefensible. And let’s be fair to the Democrats- can they really be any worse than the GOP?

Welcome AboardPost + Comments (58)