Conservatives have finally come up with a relatively compelling response to the Mark [tag]Foley[/tag] scandal. The first response from Republicans (“We didn’t know anything”) didn’t work. The second response (“We should all wait until we have all the facts”) was unpersuasive, because all the available evidence was already pretty bad. The third response (“Let’s blame the gays”) had a certain insane quality. And the fourth (“It’s Democrats’ fault”) just made the right look foolish.
Finally, they’ve stumbled upon something coherent: “[tag]Foleygate[/tag]” just doesn’t matter very much.
The other day I was reading a lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal complaining that the Mark Foley scandal had drowned out more substantive matters. “The war on terror, and Iraq, really are the largest issues in front of the American people,” urged the editors. “We need a clear reading on that in November, not on the personal ruin of Mark Foley.”
Indeed, it’s spread fairly quickly. As Glenn Greenwald noted, far-right pundit Thomas Sowell devoted his most recent column to urging the nation to “get serious.”
With a war going on in Iraq and with Iran next door moving steadily toward a nuclear bomb that could change the course of world history in the hands of international terrorists, the question for this year’s elections is not whether you or your candidate is a Democrat or a Republican but whether you are serious or frivolous.
The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol responded to the Foley controversy in a similar fashion.
It’s not credible to tar a political party with the misdeeds of one person. … Issues usually trump scandals. Americans like reading about scandals. They like watching Desperate Housewives. But voting is different from voyeurism.
Pushing this tack is a little tricky — the right has to be careful not to say that a sexual predator preying on minors, and the subsequent cover-up by the House Republican leadership, is trivia. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow tried this, but the reaction was so negative, he didn’t try it again.
That said, even if the right is cautious not to belittle cyberstalking of teens, there’s another small flaw in the argument.
At this risk of getting too “reality-based” on these guys, the problem is they all said the exact opposite just eight years ago.
The Wall Street Journal may argue that they want “substantive matters” at the fore now, not a tawdry Republican sex scandal, but the newspaper felt differently when it was a Democrat.
[T]he Journal editorial page devoted most of the 1990s to fervently hyping up sundry Bill [tag]Clinton[/tag] [tag]scandals[/tag], from a murky land deal in Arkansas to the firing of the staff of the all-important White House travel office to, of course, Clinton’s tawdry sex life. The Journal published so many editorials on these personal scandals that it compiled them into a book, “Whitewater,” that reached a staggering 541 pages. Then it proceeded to write enough subsequent scandal editorials to fill up five more books of comparable length. Now, though, it wants an earnest forum on the issues.
Thomas Sowell was right there with them.
In the late 1990s — when Osama bin Laden was busy building his Worldwide Jihadi Army to wage war against Western Civilization in order to enslave us all under his Caliphate Empire — Sowell, the Serious Scholar, devoted the vast bulk — really, virtually all — of his scholarly attention to Susan McDougal, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, the secret connections between the Clintons and Arkansas drug dealers, and the mysteries surrounding Vince Foster’s so-called “suicide.”
As for our old friend Bill Kristol, consider his May 25, 1998 editorial insisting:
“the dominant issue of the 1998 election will be Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton alone; his perjury; his cover-up; his obstruction of justice; and, yes, his sexual misconduct.”
Now, of course, [tag]conservatives[/tag] want us to get our priorities straight. Great idea — where does [tag]hypocrisy[/tag] fall on the list of priorities?