What’s the most basic issue that goes back to the days way before there were political parties? Back to prehistoric times? Protecting your family. Protecting your kids. And, if you don’t have kids, protecting kids.
And knowing that a society, others are looking out to protect others, especially kids.
It’s an easy issue to comprehend — and it’s at the root of why the GOP could wind up losing not just control of the House but the Senate. And even if it hangs on, the party will never be the same again in terms of the kind of image it had under Ronald Reagan or in early 2000.
The brutal bottom line is the Congressional GOP party leadership under the George W. Bush wing of the Republican party has been an unmitigated disaster for the GOP: ineffectual (look up that word in the dictionary and you’ll see Bill Frist’s picture under it), ignoring traditional conservative principles and, now, accused of looking the other way most likely out of fear of political repercusssions after learning about a middle aged, powerful Republican sending sometimes graphic emails to an underage teen male page.
These emails would have sparked a police visit if any average American had sent them.
I’ve done programs at some schools where they have required visiting presenters to be fingerprinted and record checked before they can even enter the building. This is the era of Amber Alerts on highways, bright, lit billboards alerting drivers of kid abductions. The slightest hint of child abuse can bring child protective services to someone’s door.
Most issues are complicated and hard to understand. This one isn’t:
It’s how you would like YOUR son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, neighbor’s kid or any kid to be treated? How would YOU react if your kid got emails like Foley’s?
How would YOU react if you learned that flabby, grey haired politicos who dine in Congress on bean soup and have pages carry their notebooks essentially either (a) looked the other way or (b) gave a slap on the wrist to the person sending the teen you know graphic, sexually-harassing emails that in the end squelched the slightest residue of late-childhood innocence?
If it was YOUR kid you’d think: the system is broke; it’s corrupt.
The problem for the GOP: it is in charge of the whole system.
This is a case where you can’t say “but under Bill Clinton” — although Fox News‘ Britt Hume tried…
But it’s not just that.
The GOP under President George Bush is now undergoing a period of almost metaphysical retaliation: bit by bit, the hollowness of words proclaimed and used as bludgeons against political foes are being seen as hallow words. Or outright hypocrisy that troubles non lockstep Republicans.
National Security? The Washington Post Bob Woodward, up until now a journalist praised by the White House, publishes a book portraying the Bush administration as dysfunctional, close-minded and indulging in outright deception on what is going on in the war in Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has memory problems when it comes to a key meeting where then CIA Director George Tenet warned her about 911 and the State Department later has to say it did happen.
Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” in 2000, raising genuine hopes that he’d be the kind of unifying force he had proven to be in Texas as Governor where he racked up huge electoral margins. But in office the administration has proven to be one of the most divisive, bitterly partisan in history. Bipartisan? Consensus? How 20th century!
911 unified the country but Bush chose to use the enormous political capital he built up in days when he appeared to be poised to become the new FDR for partisan advantage.
There are Democrats, Republicans and Independents who thought they would never ever see the day in America when:
- One party rule would create a virtual rubber stamp Congress on most matters.
- A President would propose and the majority in Congress would agree to in effect making torture official American policy.
- When a top middle aged official of the ruling party in Congress is caught and resigns due to a scandal involving sending suggestive and graphic emails to an underage teen page, the White House Press spokesman — the OFFICIAL VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE — would dismiss it as “simply naughty” emails. (Hopefully he applies tighter standards to emails his own kids get).
- As a matter of official strategy those who criticize a war going badly or raise questions would be accused by the Commander and Chief of being a party that wants to “cut and run.” It’s McCarthyism adjusted to 2006 because not all critics want immediate withdrawal.
- Many in Congress would find out after the fact about warrentless wiretaps. The executive branch just took the power and its partisans fell in line when it sought approval.
- Influence peddling would be virtually systematized by a Congress run by a party that successfully threw out the other long-entrenched party which had grown fat, arrogant and corrupt — and morphed into a copy as fat, arrogant and corrupt.
- The party that under Richard Nixon began to effectively run as the law and order party would throw away this decades-long effective “brand name.”
Everytime we do a post like this we get comments such as “you can’t be a moderate.” But let’s make it clear: you CANNOT BE a moderate or a centrist — or a traditional Republican — and support the folks who are now controlling the levers of power in the Republican party.
This is a new breed of politics at odds with Republican (including the first George Bush’s) and Democratic administrations that have come before it in style, perspective and in its hard-nosed dedication to political expediency at the expense of discarding longtime values.
It’s Republicans who need to clamor to drown out the voices of people such as Rush Limbaugh who can be trusted to defend the Republican elites, no matter what they do, and the government no matter how poorly any policy goes — with the words “but under Bill Clinton” or “you know, Hillary..” or “the Democrats once…”
On this issue? Limbaugh says the Democrats set Foley up — so Foley is now the victim. Oh.
The Bush Republicans came to power saying they were and would be DIFFERENT from what they claimed Clinton and the Democrats were.
Now they argue if there’s a problem it’s not so bad because under Clinton…(and when they say that they are often inaccurate).
Spin IS 21st century politics, so a week or two from now — and certainly close to the election — there’s chance the P.R., political and law teams will be making the case that this scandal wasn’t all that shocking. And we may never know the full details.
But what thinking Americans of all parties will likely remember when they go to the polls is the arrogance of how this was handled.
It’s one more layer of a multi-layered skunk skin that many Americans including many Republican conservatives have begun to conclude the country is wearing — and now seek to shed.
The question: will revulsion among some Republicans over the way this has been handled and the sinking suspicion that a suspected sexual predator was allowed to continue to have contact with underage teens lead to either a housecleaning of the GOP elite or, at least, begin the post-Bush era by putting people into key positions who aren’t tied to the Bush-Rove machine?
Conservatives have been rebelling over this scandal, and several other issues. A bit of particular bad news for the GOP House leadership comes in the form of an editorial in today’s Washington Times, a conservative newspaper. Excerpts:
The facts of the disgrace of Mark Foley, who was a Republican member of the House from a Florida district until he resigned last week, constitute a disgrace for every Republican member of Congress. Red flags emerged in late 2005, perhaps even earlier, in suggestive and wholly inappropriate e-mail messages to underage congressional pages. His aberrant, predatory — and possibly criminal — behavior was an open secret among the pages who were his prey. The evidence was strong enough long enough ago that the speaker should have relieved Mr. Foley of his committee responsibilities contingent on a full investigation to learn what had taken place, whether any laws had been violated and what action, up to and including prosecution, were warranted by the facts. This never happened….
…..On Friday, Mr. Hastert dissembled, to put it charitably, before conceding that he, too, learned about the e-mail messages sometime earlier this year. Late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hastert insisted that he learned of the most flagrant instant-message exchange from 2003 only last Friday, when it was reported by ABC News. This is irrelevant. The original e-mail messages were warning enough that a predator — and, incredibly, the co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children — could be prowling the halls of Congress. The matter wasn’t pursued aggressively. It was barely pursued at all. Moreover, all available evidence suggests that the Republican leadership did not share anything related to this matter with any Democrat.
We have noted that point repeatedly in our posts here as one of the most damning aspects of this case — a virtual “smoking gun” that this case was kept under wraps so Democrats would not find out about it. MORE:
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. When predators are found they must be dealt with, forcefully and swiftly. This time the offender is a Republican, and Republicans can’t simply “get ahead” of the scandal by competing to make the most noise in calls for a full investigation. The time for that is long past.
And then the BIG NEWS, coming from a paper such as the Times:
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.
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.
Will Hastert go? If not, the GOP will twist slowly, slowly in the wind…alienating by his sheer presence key parts of the GOP coalition such as social conservatives, Barry Goldwater-descended conservatives and soccer moms. The GOP has already lost the bulk of independents (read the polls). And Bush’s mega partisanship has left him with a thimbleful of Democrat support.
Democrats talk about this election as critical to getting their country back.
But in this election, perhaps Republicans who don’t like what they see in the values and veracity of the people who control the levers of their own party may be among those who vote to get their party back.
The Foley case could simply prove to be the last instant message that broke the camel’s back.
UPDATE: Bull Moose writes:
The Moose comments on how far the elephant has fallen. The Moose witnessed the Republican Revolution of ’94. He remembers the fervent calls for reform and renewal. Now, the House GOP is rightly staring into the abyss. The Foley revelation is the latest representation of the perversion of power.
It took the Republicans a little more than a decade to achieve what forty years of Democratic rule accomplished – the institutionalization of corruption. The major difference is that the elephant masqueraded as a reformist, moral revolutionary. Hypocrisy is truly the tribute vice pays to virtue. These guys give Elmer Gantry a bad name.
How can fiscal conservatives continue to endorse Republican rule? How can social conservatives embrace a House leadership that neglected to expel a child predator from their ranks? How can reformists applaud the Abramoff Congress?
Read his whole post.
ALSO READ: Glenn Greenwald, Obsidian Wings, John Cole, La Shawn Barber, Talking Points Memo, Captain Ed Morrissey, James Joyner, Poliblog, The Heretik, Dick Polman, Taylor Marsh (who has a post dealing not just with the scandal but Rush Limbaugh’s latest outrageous defense-lawyer attack-the-Democrats comment).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.