Did Karl Rove twist Foley’s arm?

October 12, 2006

The one minor flaw in the Mark [tag]Foley[/tag] scandal has been a nagging detail: the [tag]Bush[/tag] [tag]White House[/tag] hasn’t been connected to the mess at all. What fun is that? How can the [tag]Republican[/tag] establishment screw up this badly without any fingerprints from the Bush gang?

We’re in luck. TNR’s Ryan Lizza reports today that the House GOP leadership wasn’t the only one willing to look the other way on Foley’s “problem” to help keep a House seat in Republican hands.

According to TNR’s source, Foley had practically decided to retire from the House in order to cash in as a [tag]lobbyist[/tag] and told friends he was preparing to forgo re-election this year.

But when Foley’s friend saw the Congressman again this spring, something had changed. To the source’s surprise, Foley told him he would indeed be standing for re-election. What happened? [tag]Karl Rove[/tag] intervened.

According to the source, Foley said he was being pressured by “the White House and Rove gang,” who insisted that Foley run. If he didn’t, Foley was told, it might impact his lobbying career.

“He said, ‘The White House made it very clear I have to run,'” explains Foley’s friend, adding that Foley told him that the White House promised that if Foley served for two more years it would “enhance his success” as a lobbyist. “I said, ‘I thought you wanted out of this?’ And he said, ‘I do, but they’re scared of losing the House and the thought of two years of Congressional hearings, so I have two more years of duty.'”

This obviously needs to get fleshed out in more detail, and I haven’t a clue who TNR’s source is or how reliable he/she is, but it’s not exactly hard to believe.

We know, from GOP sources who talked to Bob Novak, that Foley approached NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) about retirement. Reynolds, after learning about Foley’s incriminating emails, still urged Foley to seek re-election. Indeed, Novak reported this week that Foley wanted to pursue lobbying instead of another term.

Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley had two excellent job offers in the private sector this year when Rep. Tom Reynolds, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, talked him into seeking a seventh term.

Although Reynolds says Foley was merely deciding whether to run again, the talk in Republican circles on Capitol Hill was that he was ready to leave Congress. His inappropriate e-mails to a former page were known to the Republican leadership late last year. The 16th Congressional District was considered so safely Republican that any GOP candidate could carry it but now likely will be lost with Foley still on the ballot.

Is it so hard to believe that Reynolds and the NRCC had been ordered by Rove to strong-arm any Republicans considering retirement to forget it? Is it also so hard to believe that the White House would tacitly threaten Foley, telling him it’d “enhance his success” if he waited two years to quit?

At a minimum, it’s an angle that warrants additional scrutiny.

This would be a plum story for ace AP investigative reporter John Solomon to follow. Too bad he’s so busy writing bogus exposes of Harry Reid.

  • “Just when I thought I was out, they PULL ME BACK IN.”

    Bwaa haa haa! This ought to put paid to the “Karl Rove is an evil genius” garbage. Afraid they might lose the house, they hang onto Foley, and reap a category five sh*tstorm.

  • No, no, it’s not hard at all to imagine the White House badgering Foley into running for yet another term. What’s hard to believe is that they’d sacrifice a safe Republican district by putting a then rumored-to-be sexual predator up for re-election.

    Since the White House has a hand in Foley’s re-election bid, how long before we learn for certain the White House intervened and kept the FBI from investigating Foley?

  • Yes this is not out of the realm of possibility, but I still wonder why. From all that is known, it seems that it was widly known that Foley had some baggage that would make it not unlikely, that he was a ticking scandal bomb just looking to explode. Why didn’t they just say OK, we will find a replacement (like they have had to). After all isn’t this a fairly safe district?

    Instead they had to find a last minute replacement who might end up being sacrificed on the altar of GOP power politics, because they were so desperate to keep a seat that was fairly safe anyway. Seems to me that they just made life difficult for themselves when it was unnecessary.

  • “And [Foley] said, ‘I do [want to retire], but they’re scared of losing the House and the thought of two years of Congressional hearings, so I have two more years of duty.'”

    First, I think it’s nice that Foley recognized that his service in the House was a duty.

    Second, does sort of shows just what the Bushites (with good reason) are afraid of.

    Third, you think they won’t be diebolding this election every way they can?

    “Since the White House has a hand in Foley’s re-election bid, how long before we learn for certain the White House intervened and kept the FBI from investigating Foley?” – brainiac

    Damn good question. About on par with what did Katherine Harris dig up on Foley in preparation for her Senate bid (he ran in 2004 and thought of running in 2006 for the Senate) which she did not share to “protect the children”.

  • It’s simple. Everyone and their dog knew about the e-mails and the gnawing on the door to the pages’ dorm and what not. Someone told him “It would be a shame, if this information were “accidentally” released, know what I mean?” and he folded.

    Looks, smells and sounds exactly like a Karl Rove plot. They just didn’t think anyone else would find out, hence the panic and sour grapes griping about a Democrat Plot.

    I heard Foley is supposed to make a public statement when he gets out of Rehab (30 days). I can’t remember if that will be the day before or the day after election day. Should be interesting.

  • Rove “the mastermind” image is getting tarnished and his other projects in progress must also be suspect after the Foley disaster.
    Confidence is essential for con-men, and Rove must be on his heels.

  • why on earth should they be scared at the thought of 2 years of Congressional hearings?

  • Even if Rove did pressure Foley to seek re-election, so what? Is there any evidence that the White House was aware of Foley’s proclivities toward pages? And if not, is there anything particularly inappropriate about the president’s political advisor putting pressure on an apparently solid incumbent to seek an extra term in order to protect a solidly Republican district from a midterm challenge? I’m not one to generally give Rove the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like a real stretch to find anything inappropriate in this, even if it is true.

  • I dont think they needed to use any blackmail beyond cutting him out of the money loop in the lobbying world. That threat is enough, because he really has no prospects outside of that world.

    Also, since they knew that he was a predator for potentially 6 years, of course they thought they could simply count on him for re-election and not worry that somehow, now, this dirty laundry would be aired to the public when it had sat festering for so long, and so quietly.

    You know, outside of pure nastiness, none of these people look particularly brilliant. It’s just that when you play a game by your own rules, chuck morality out the window, and spin a completely fabricated tale through propaganda about what you are really doing, it may actually look like you are smart. But these are the tactics of stupid people, cheats, who can’t win any other way. Only as long as you give them the benefit of the doubt that they are legit, could you be fooled into thinking they are smart. Crafty, manipulative, conniving, lots of things can be said of them, but essentially they are just cheats, and now it is starting to show that they are lousy ones at that.

    A stupid President surrounded by evil men, many who are just phony – and the few intellectuals, completely corrupted.

  • “But these are the tactics of stupid people, cheats, who can’t win any other way.” – G2000

    That’s a nice summation. It describes their attitude (toward Democrats supposed fraudulant voter registrations, for instance) and their response (to cheat themselves). It explains their paranoia (the Democrats spilled the Foley IMs right before the election) and their incompetence (what, FEMA has a record of helping people?). It explains their disdain for their supports (the Theocratic Reactionaries are “Nuts”) and their opponents (liberals and progressives are “Traitors”). And it explains their hatred of anyone with a higher intelligence or better track record (i.e., Bill Clinton).

  • My fantasy: After Mark “Maf54” Foley leaves rehab, he complains that he wanted to retire because he was just sooo tired of being hit on by Karl “chubby” Rover.

  • I think G2000 has nailed it. These people aren’t smart, they are cheats. Those of us who are teachers know that cheaters are clever but foolish, because they risk everything for short term gain. Once the cheater is unmasked, the dynamic is lost. “all the Kings Horses . . . will not put Humpty Dumpty together again.” Unless there is a Diebold miracle, we will continue with the unmasking after the election.

  • I think I can consider myself vindicated: when the Foley thing broke, I speculated hereabouts that there was no way Rove didn’t know about the whole thing, and I was roundly harrumphed for my leftobloggotriumphalism.

  • “I was roundly harrumphed for my leftobloggotriumphalism.” – TCM

    You were harrumphed here? I find that hard to believe 😉

  • Roundly, Lance, roundly. 🙂

    No, you were right to temper my frogmarch enthusiasm, after so many disappointments — but the logics of the whole Foley thing (or, as I like to call it, Chickenhawk-gate, which neatly conflates two GOP vices in one neologism) really did (and do) indicate that Rove was briefed and pulling levers (or perhaps unbriefed and “pulling levers”).

  • Oh boy — it’s starting to sound a bit like last night’s South Park in here!

    Look, in anything like this, you have to strip away your own political views and the views of the people involved first, and just take a deep breath and think of them as human beings. Then, play this little game with yourself: what’s the simplest, most plausible reason that could have motivated a sitting President’s political adviser to pressure a secure incumbent Congressman of his party to run again? Well, I think James Dillon has it right: because they want to retain control of Congress (duh!). It would be a definite stretch — and require some real, tangible evidence if you were really going to press the point — to claim that the White House knew all about the creepy IM habits of a low-profile back-bencher like Foley. These guys aren’t all-seeing, all-knowing supermen. If they were, they’d screw up a hell of a lot less often! Republican or Democrat or Trotskyite, we’re all just human beings at the end of the day, and the motivations of human beings are really pretty simple to figure out.

  • Oh, boy — it’s starting to sound like, oh, I dunno, Ann of Green Gables in here!

    Avalanche, I hear what you’re sayin’, and I for one certainly don’t buy into the whole Karl-Rove-is-Dr.-Mabuse thing.

    However, to think that Rove wasn’t aware of the various Congressional peccadilloes and the efforts to cover ’em up is to utterly disregard the power structure of the GOP Congress. Foley’s proclivities being known in GOP Congressional circles for at minimum 8 years, it beggars belief that Rove wouldn’t have known. Yes, Foley’s a backbench tool (yes, more South Park-ism on my part), and yes, merely 1 of 219-something-odd GOP Congresscritters; but Rove is by all bipartisan accounts possessed of an extremely faci;le mind for recalling district results/demographics/candidates/etc.

    My “Rove knew! Rove knew!” cuckooing isn’t of the “Rove controls all! Pull back the curtain and the Wizard disappears!” variety, but of the “Well, this is the guy who is the de facto boss of the guy responsible for maintaining GOP majority in Congress”/orgchart variety. Smearing Rove (and that’s all that acknowledgment of his involvement would be, since I actually don’t think there’s really much “there there” to Chickenhwak-gate, and am only concerned with the political “optics”) would certainly NOT bring the entire GOP apparatus crashing down — but it WOULD be yet another sluice in the waterboarding of the GOP that’s necessary to hel guarantee Dem control of at least 1 House next month.

    Plus, I think Rove’s a slimy bastard and I’d love to see him publicly embarrassed.

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