Posted on 10/04/2006 1:44:04 PM PDT by Dane
Hypocritical Democrats Weigh In On Foley Saga By DANIEL JOHN SOBIESKI Democrats and much of the so-called mainstream media are having a field day with the Foley affair, citing it as an example of Republican hypocrisy — talking “morals” and “values” while shielding a child predator. Nothing of the sort happened.
The fact is that up to recently the GOP leadership didn’t know much more than what many in the media knew for sometime — that Florida representative Mark Foley had sent inappropriate e-mails to a young male page asking what he wanted for his birthday and for a picture.
These are separate from the text messages only recently revealed, which Rep. Hastert properly called “vile and repulsive.” Rep. Foley, unlike his predecessors of both parties caught doing much worse, resigned immediately after ABC broadcast the e-mails and text messages.
While Rep. Hastert immediately called for a Justice Department investigation, critics said this was inadequate and merely part of the cover-up. But it is not unreasonable to ask who knew about Foley’s messages, when they knew and why they failed to act, and why they acted now, right before the election.
A good question to ask is why newspapers like the liberal St. Petersburg Times, which had both the story and the e-mails between Foley and a young page last November, decided the e-mails were nothing more than “friendly chit-chat.” Miami Herald executive editor Tom Fiedler said his paper “didn’t feel there was sufficient clarity in the e-mails to warrant a story.”
So how can the GOP be condemned for inaction on an incident that major media outlets dismissed? And just who was shopping the story around? And why did it break in a major way just in time to influence this November’s elections? The Democrats got their “October surprise.”
How convenient.
Both parties share the blame on this one. Those with short attention spans forget that in 1983 both Rep. Garry Studds, Massachusetts Democrat, and Rep. Daniel Crane, Illinois Republican, were found to have done more than e-mail their young pages, but actually have sex with them.
Both should have been immediately expelled. Neither were.
Crane was rightly voted out of office in 1984, but Studds, who turned his back on the House as the charges were read against him, was not only not asked to resign but was renominated by his party and went on to six more terms. Studds actually had the audacity to hold a press conference with the 17-year-old male page, proudly acknowledging their relationship.
Have we forgotten Rep. Mel Reynolds? He was convicted of having sex with an underage campaign volunteer. He was later pardoned by Bill Clinton and went to work for Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH — as a youth counselor, no less.
As Deroy Murdock, a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, wrote back in 2002, “This is a first in American politics. An ex-congressman who had sex with a subordinate, won clemency from a president who had sex with a subordinate, then was hired by a clergyman who had sex with a subordinate.”
In 1989, another Massachusetts Democrat, Rep. Barney Frank, was found to be living with Steve Gobie, a male prostitute who ran a gay sex-for-hire ring out of Frank’s apartment.
Frank admitted using his position to fix 33 parking tickets for Gobie.
What happened to Frank? The House voted merely to reprimand him, a slap on the proverbial wrist and today he is an honored member of Congress much in demand as a speaker and on cable news shows.
If GOP House leaders are guilty of incredibly gross negligence, as critics charge, then the Democratic leadership was similarly guilty in 1983 when they did less than nothing and could have dealt with this issue in an effective and bipartisan way. Meanwhile, let those without sin…
I wonder how many Dems spent a night with Foley?
So, of course, the solution is to return the Democrats to power since they are the ones who stood and applauded one of their own who had sodomized an underage page. Yea, that makes sense. As long as you are not a hypocrite...
Mr foley should just move to Massachusetts and marry the page, then the democrats wouldn't have a word to say.
or William "$ 90,000 Dollar Bill" Jefferson(freezer boy}
Good post. The story ties all the names and timelines together nicely. Well done.
I understand that Democrats are going to make all of their e-mails and instant messages public, and that John Kerry has promised again to make his military record public. /sarcasm
just for fun
"Ann Coulter confirms Bill Clinton is Gay"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnIZ9MeOQU&mode=related&search=
If figure as long as everyone is being outed then we might as well out the predator in chief.
And there you have, in a nutshell, why this scandal is so dangerous to Republicans.
The Democrats have never set themselves up as the party of morality and religion. That's why it doesn't matter that:
It flat out doesn't matter because the public doesn't expect high moral standards from a Democrat on sexual (or homosexual) matters. Democrats have always been able to couch these transgressions as "private matters".
But Republicans have set themselves up as the party of morality and religion, even to the point of becoming moral scolds. That is why this matters. Expectations are high for Republicans because Republicans themselves raised the bar!
And why shouldn't voters hold the democrats to a hgiher standard.
Just because the democrats don't want to be held to a higher standard, is that an excuse to disregard people who say they should.
Dems want people to think that forcing Foley to resign is hypocrisy and a cover-up. This is the mental sleight-of-hand they are trying to play. For the game to work they have to make the Oprah-watchers think that the party that expels a Foley is corrupt and the party that protects its Foleys is a righteous accuser.
But this is the difference. We don't accept that kind of behavior, and they do. We get rid of our Foley's, and they revere theirs. They are trying to make a scandal out of the fact that Hastert turned Foley in the moment he saw the evidence, and the simple voter is supposed to follow them through their mental and moral acrobatics and ignore the whiplash.
Because the Democrats have never asked them to. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once pointed out how the Democrats had become skilled in "defining deviancy down". You'll note that while the Democrats are having a field day, not one has said that he is above this kind of behavior. Rather, the Democrats point out that Republicans, the guardians of morality, are hypocrites for engaging in these activities. You'll never see a Democrat take the moral high ground on this because he can't.
Just because the democrats don't want to be held to a higher standard, is that an excuse to disregard people who say they should.
Can you build an electoral majority out of those people who say the Democrats should be held to a higher standard? If you can, you win.
They've overdone it just as they did with the Allen word slur.
~ ~ Democrats always overplay their hands.
Because Foley's behavior is exactly considered perfect in the "eyes" of the democRATic party and the "drive-by" L.S.M.!!!
And how can we forget Clinton and T Kennedy. He even killed someone and got elected to the office of senator. The dems howling over this is the epitomy of hypocrisy.
I agree. At first, voters were in shock. Now, they remember the democrats literally destroying anyone and everyone who came forward in the Clinton scandals. They're rubbing their own dirt in their own faces.
Not only is Clinton front and center, but people are mentioning all the other democrat sex scandals as well as the left wings pro-homo agenda. NOW people are talking about Washington scandals, and there's no escape for the democrats. They've opened a 30 day can of worms this time.
For a long time, Congress has endorsed "gay rights", pretending that homosexuality is a harmless "lifestyle". Our Congresspersons are afraid to acknowledge that gay sex is the root cause of AIDS around the world, for which Congress is spending billions in taxpayer money. Foley is just one example of a homosexual seeking out other males, including boys, with whom he can engage in sodomy. Foley is no different than the gays who march at Disney during "Gay Days", displaying their "Gay Pride". So why all the fuss about Foley? Congress should be protecting his "gay rights", not bashing him. (Vomit/sarcasm) Or maybe Congress should get real and hold hearings on sodomy and the AIDS pandemic. Tell the public what it's really all about. Instead, we have public schools teaching students about "gay rights", as if the sodomites were not a menace to public health.
Dang that Karl Rove is a genius!
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