Posted on 03/13/2010 3:20:07 PM PST by JoeProBono
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Utah's House majority leader resigned from the Legislature Saturday, two days after acknowledging he paid a woman $150,000 to keep quiet about a nude hot-tubbing incident that took place a quarter century ago when she was a teenager. Republican Rep. Kevin Garn's Thursday night confession came in a speech before House colleagues and stunned this conservative state. On Saturday, he apologized in an e-mail to House Speaker David Clark for becoming a distraction. "After discussing this matter with my family, I have decided that it is in the best interests of them, my colleagues and the people of Utah," he wrote. Garn, 55, acknowledged the indiscretion with the legal minor immediately after the Legislature adjourned for the session. "Although we did not have any sexual contact, it was still clearly inappropriate - and it was my fault," he said from the House floor Thursday night.
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Unlike the Dems, our guys quit/resign when the jig is up.
I'm sure that $150k you accepted was devastating.
They have to--some of their base have morals. Make no mistake: this man would never have resigned if he had not been caught.
It is the moral superiority of the base that makes this happen, clearly not the moral superiority of the candidates or incumbents.
Now that both of them are free to move beyond the filthy lucre and the shameful silence of the matter, they are both likely to be more happier.
Still, he bears much greater responsibility for what happened. He was what--30? She was 15? Not even a close call.
It was probably Helen.
“. . . more happier”? Sigh.
I see a book coming out in the next six months to a year called, “Confessions Of a Hot Tub Politician.”
NO sale.
Generally speaking, I think conservatives and Republicans have a better track record in this respect (Larry Craig notwithstanding).
It’s not popular here to say so, but I put Eric Massa in the same category. He screwed up, admitted it, and resigned - - only to be called a nut and a kook by everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Glenn Beck. Eric Massa didn’t pay anyone to keep quiet, and he didn’t lie or deny what happened. Yet “we” seem to want to crucify him for taking the high road.
To use Bill O’Reillys favorite line, “Am I wrong?”
“legal minor”
Is that an oxymoron?
He is paying her not to tell what ELSE happened.
He still has to pay her to not say what else happened.
Obviously he is paying her for keeping what else happened quiet. Sitting nude in a hot tub is not a big deal, nudists and naturists do it all the time.
Something else happened. He is going to have to keep those payments coming.
He was paying her to save his political career and she apparently accepted the money and outed him anyway.
*cough* Mark Sanford *cough*
P.J. O’Rourke’s “Parliament of Whores” should be required reading by all FReepers.
Too many folks are easily swayed with the right marketing pitch. Hmmm O”Rourke and Barnum....
He did NOT admit it. He said it was nothing sexual etc. He only quit because the Ethics Cmte or whatver had just rec’d reords of his days in the Navy, IIRC.
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