Sunday Discussion Group

October 1, 2006

Let’s take a moment to consider what Americans learned about their government over the last six days.

On Sunday, we learned that the National Intelligence Estimate, the most complete intelligence report completed by all available agencies, argues, in the words of one American intelligence official, “[T]he Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse.” The same day, we learn that the president dismisses the ongoing tragedies in Iraq as “just a comma” in history.

On Tuesday, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), with no evidence at all, argued on national television that Saddam Hussein had WMD and was an accomplice to the 9/11 attacks, despite reality that says the opposite.

On Wednesday, a majority of the House of Representatives endorsed the Bush administration’s deplorable torture bill.

On Thursday, a majority of the Senate endorsed the Bush administration’s deplorable torture bill.

On Friday, a report explained that the White House misled the country about its connections with Jack Abramoff. A few hours later, Mark Foley, a member of the House Republican leadership, was forced to resign in disgrace for being a sexual predator.

On Friday and Saturday, revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book highlighted, for the umpteenth time, that the Bush White House has been breathtakingly “clueless, dishonest, and dysfunctional” in its handling of the war in Iraq. Worse yet, the same book notes that the White House was offered a chance to kill Osama bin Laden months before 9/11, but the Bush gang didn’t feel like it.

And today we learn that House GOP leaders knew about Foley’s “problems” nearly a year ago, but decided not to do much of anything.

For some political parties, these stunning disclosures would fill up years. For the Republican Party in 2006, it’s literally just a week.

So, what’s the discussion for the day? I’m afraid it’s a little vague. Maybe it’s best to break the question up into separate parts.

Can we now officially declare the Republican Party bankrupt?

Has any party ever been as helplessly, shamelessly corrupt and ineffective as today’s GOP?

How can this party possibly compete nationally in a campaign season?

What more, exactly, would someone need as proof to see that the modern-day GOP has lost its moral compass and completely fallen apart?

Spoken like a true defeatocrat.

  • These are all good questions, Steve, and the answer to them all is “it doesn’t matter” so long as we continue to have a compliant, lapdog media “watching” these creeps.

  • It was quite a week for the repubs, wasn’t it? Allen’s deer head in in a black family’s mailbox didn’t make the cut. Also not making the cut is Graftmeister Abramoff’s extensive, but previously denied, contacts with the White House and RNC chief Ken Mehlman.
    I think it’s fair to say at this point that anyone who supports these cretins needs a straight jacket and a padded cell.

  • Yes, it’s partly the media. However, it’s mainly because of their effectiveness in the media (advertising, etc.), their cohesiveness of message (was!war!war!), and, relatedly, their money and corporate backers. After all Steve listed, you’d think the Dems would be in good shape. I hope they will be come November but I’m not all that confident that they are now or will be then.

  • What more proof would someone need? A viable alternative that can point out the un-realities being sold by the Republican party, and supplant them with real world assessments and ideas. In other words, a reality-based opposition with convictions of its own. And, as Farinata X points out, an honest press would help.

  • Questions, questions, questions …

    Will Americans wake up and pay attention?

    How smart/dumb are the American people?

    Do Americans live in a reality-based/faith-based world?

    How good of job has the VRWC/MSM (There’s a difference?) done?

    The proof is in the pudding: All answers will be revealed by the November election. Stay tuned.

  • All these scandals makes nationalizing the elections a good idea. They also make an October surprise of maximum deviousness probable. They could try wagging the dog, but this dog of a party has a whole lot of tails all wagging in the wrong direction.

    On Thursday’s torture bill I’m hoping that the administration made a fatal error by adding the option for the president to declare US citizens as enemy combatants. Hopefully this will give the Supreme Court the hook upon which to find this whole law unconstitutional.

    Another tipping point, I think, has been reached. I think now that any new attacks will be blamed on Bush rather than empower him. I question whether the nation is so much afraid of terrorism as that the issue has just been exploited by politicos of politics and religion. Who do you know who is really afraid?

    The “comma” comment really showed the ignorance of our Comma-nder in Chief.

    I think another aspect that hasn’t been mentioned is that the people responsible for the first bombing of the trade centers were caught and prosecuted by the Clinton admin. They were dealt with.

    It’s hard to make too much ado over any Bin Laden issue before 9/11. Before then he was simply part of the fragmented series of attacks on US interests overseas. Part of the reason there is such an assault on our civil liberties is that Bush was embarassed by his lack of attention to terror issues and our country suffered for the laxity. Now he wants to sew up every hole in the fabric of our lives to prevent a highly unlikely devastating attack by Al Qaida. It’s not like we lose the “war on terror” and Bush has to hand over the sword to Bin Laden making him supreme commander of the US. In other words Bush is not a war president.

    I notice the feebleness with which Bushi’ites try to make this prez look presidential. What a pale copy of diplomacy was the dinner with Karzai and Musharraf. I think they were trying to evoke the dipomacy of Carter bringing together Begin and Sadat. The Bush form of that was having an uncomfortable dinner party with the First Adolescent making lame jokes.

    There was an excellent opinion piece in Saturday’s NY Times by Robert Harris about how a “terrorist” attack led to the decline of the Roman Empire by putting power into one man’s hands.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/opinion/30harris.html

    Lesson: Even a good man shouldn’t have too much power. And Bush isn’t even a good man.

  • Somebody ought to dub over that clip of Tom Delay…

    From:
    “We aren’t a super power, we are a super-duper power.”

    To:
    “We aren’t super corrupt, we are a super-duper corrupt.”

    And then run CB’s list of republican-based insults that assail the very spirit of America.

    Finish it off with this solemn voice over:

    “These people are just enemies of our American ideals…
    They are super-duper enemies of our American ideals.”

  • Those are good questions, but the fact that they aren’t merely rhetorical shows how troubled the country/electorate is.

    The first question really needs to be reworded to ask if Rethugs are morally bankrupt. Because no matter the answer to that question, it may not matter in this country because they are not, in fact, bankrupt. Indeed, as this article in Time points out, the Rethugs have money, and of bigger concern to me, seem to know better how to use it than progressives do.

    The other question is “does it matter how bad the Rethugs are if the Dems are invertabrates burying themselves in primordial ooze?” You can blame the media if you want for their tendency to blame the D’s for things the R’s are doing, but it is hard to argue with what this aptly-titled WaPo editorial says about both parties behavior this week.

    The hard-to-deny aspects of these two articles in combination gives me little hope for success this fall, no matter how many Foleys, Abramoffs, Woodward books, etc. there are. The grassroots need to rise up and force the Dems to be a better party (both in opposition and in governing) at both a substantive and operational level.

  • I am a new reader and new poster to this site. I very much like the thoughfulness of both CB’s postings and the insight of the readers’ postings. There is a refreshing lack of ranting and obscenity here, even among your trolls. On to my offering.

    As long as the Republican’ts have their 24/7 propaganda organ, aka Fox News, and as long as they continue to attend prayer breakfasts and shout “JEEEsus” at every opportunity, they will hold onto their base. The extreme right-wing fake Xtians (Dobson, Wildmon, Robertson et al.) will simply draw their blinders tighter and continue to pretend that they still somehow have the moral upper hand. And as long as the rest of the media remain terrified to print / air the complete and uncomfortable truths about what Fearless Leader and his minions are really doing, they will hold onto their base.

    I fear I must agree with smiley, that the cohesiveness of the Repub message in all its outlets, as they send their various mouthpieces out to the consistently Repub-leaning talking head shows (irrespective of the network), the Repubs will continue to whitewash quite effectively the turpitude of the current Caligula administration.

    I am truly at a loss as to what more they have to do for the MSM and the country at large to understand what a train wreck they are, how they are systematically destroying everything good this country has ever stood for. I have lived my life with an essentially upbeat, optimistic outlook, but I fear that the events of the past six years and the resounding non-outrage of the media establishment and the people at large are driving me over the line from a healthy scepticism to cynicism. I devoutly hope that finally, finally this past week will indeed be the beginning of the end for the Repub ascendancy, as they have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they do not care about anything but cronyism and money, but I’m not terribly optimistic.

  • I don’t expect the Republicans to lose as badly as predicted. Remember that the majority of the American people polled that they wanted anybody but Bush, yet Bush won. Vote tampering is part of it but not all of it. Take Governor Arnold here in California. The man is not very good at his job and he is probably going to win.

    The Republican strategy of focusing on local issues and making each race about local issues is a smart one.

    When people are afraid, they are less likely to push for radical changes. The Republicans are counting on that.

  • Don’t mean to sound like a broken record but …. maybe if the Ds want another shot at being the majority they need to go on the offensive. Attack the Republican’s strength.

    What if the Ds and Indies began en masse challenged THE UNDERLYING PREMISE for passing all this garbage. 9/11! What if they began calling for a new investigation NOW. (I know, they must control Congress to control the agenda — BUT NOT THE PROPAGANDA WAR.)

    What if the party line became “give us Congress and we’ll stop this President’s agenda by investigating what really happened on 9/11?”

    What if Democratic and Independent candidates showed the Building 7 demolition video (www.WTC7.net) with a voice-over demanding answers before surrendering one more civil liberty.Even FEMA and NIST haven’t explained how it could collapse into its own footprint! And there are hundreds of other credible scientific questions! Enough to raise reasonable doubts in the minds of voters.

    What if candidates connected the dots? Outlined ALL of the lies this Administration has been caught in during the past 5 years — including the ones about 9/11? Explained how a Republican controlled Congress has created an incredibly powerful Orwellian Executive Branch?

    What have they got to loose? The majority?

  • In terms of the upcoming elections, there’s really only one question, and I haven’t seen anyone answer it: who or what will Republican-leaning voters come out to vote for in November. I blew off the Democrats in 1994 because they were corrupt, and I see emotional parallels between my feelings then and how Republicans must feel now.

    As to the degree of corruption, I think we’re only halfway through the process – meaning the part where people commit crimes. We still have to wait for all this to move through the courts. Here’s how I put it in a post today:

    “…the law is a lagging indicator: it only acts when charges are filed and cases are brought. One big reason Republicans are so desperate to maintain control of the House and the Senate is that those bodies can issue subpoenas and force people to turn over evidence in congressional investigations. If Democrats take the House they could issue a flurry of subpoenas on a wide-ranging slate of unethical and criminal behavior that has taken place under Republican rule. Subsequent investigations could result in charges being filed and sentences being handed down for years, which would mean long-term, protracted problems for the GOP.”

    http://thepremise.com/archives/10/01/2006/234

  • Too bad voters don’t use their brains when pulling the lever for a person. Voting may be the most emotional, irrational thing some people do; it’s the only way to explain Shrubs approval ratings and the belief that Democrats don’t walk the walk.

    Who would Jesus Torture?

  • I think the GOP’s genius is in realizing how little of a role facts and reality play in people’s political beliefs, and how to play at the emotions and gut where most people’s decisions are made. While Democrats go after details and substance, the GOP cares about the headline and narrative, knowing that far more people are going to get little more than a glance at the story on the way to the sports page.

    The question has always been, how far can the GOP drift from reality before it’s beyond the abilities of spin? The answer is pretty darn far. Perception is everything. And it’s the only thing they do well. Their ability to mold image and narrative outperforms every failure. Our inability overshadows every success.

    We need to learn politics. They need to learn policy.

  • I just heard a replay of the Hannity radio show (I assume from earlier this week) where Pat Caddell (sp?), who is clearly out of the closet as a republican, said it would be good for Repubs in ’08 if the Dems take a small majority in the House this year. They won’t be able to do much and will have to share the blame for the mess the country is in in ’08. So, they know the country is in a mess and are already starting to think of ways to blam the Dems for that mess. After all, politics is far more important than fixing the country…

  • “The “comma” comment really showed the ignorance of our Comma-nder in Chief.” – Dale

    The “Comma” comment shows the metric of Boy George II. It’s not what you or I feel about this twit, it is history’s judgement that “matters” to Boy George II. In this his model is Harry Truman, who was villified in 1952 because of the Korean War, but has been treated kindly by history. Of course, this is all a sham. Boy George II doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion. He is sure he has God’s impremator (as proved by the fact that his is President even after losing in 2000) so the opinion of mere humans like you, me or the American People matter not at all.

    But there is one thing Boy George II is going to discover if he lives that long. History will not treat him as another Harry Truman. Herbert Hoover is more likely the model.

  • But I should have also said.

    When it comes to unraveling the Republican’ts from The Base, the Foley story is the one to focus on. Here, clearly, we see that the Republican’ts have absolutely no common shared values with “values voters”. Imagine the NRCC not jumping to replace Foley before the primary when they had all that advanced notice. What were they thinking?

  • The common thread between the torture vote and the Foley cover-up is that for these Republicans, the only objective is to protect their majorities. They pushed through the torture/Show Trials bill because their political advisers wanted to change the subject from their myriad failures of governance and figured they could bludgeon the Democrats with it.

    And Hastert, Reynolds and the rest of the slime in leadership were silent about their sexual-predator colleague because keeping his seat safe was of greater importance to them than keeping young pages safe.

    Meanwhile, they couldn’t even pass the damn budget, the most basic responsibility of legislators. They couldn’t get Bush’s immigration bill–the one measure where he was arguably right on the merits–even close to a vote. They didn’t conduct any oversight on Iraq, which looks more and more like the worst foreign policy debacle in the nation’s history.

    If Democrats can’t win this year, it really raises the question of why the party should exist at all. The Republicans have relinquished their claim to govern on grounds of both morality and competence.

  • How can this party possibly compete nationally in a campaign season?
    This is a midterm election. We do not really have a national campaign going on. Consequently the national themes are only relevant in certain races.

    Take Pennsylvania for example. In my own district there are two extremes. My Republican congressman John Peterson will be reelected this year, and in two years, and, so on and so forth until he retires. The idea that the Republicans are morally bankrupt will have no impact on this election because Peterson himself is not seen as corrupt. On the other hand, my senator Rick Santorum is part of the K Street project and is close to Bush. He will likely win my district, but lose the state.

    In the middle you have the close races where the incumbent congressman or senator is not directly tied to Republican corruption, but where a general sense of “throw the bums out” or-my favorite-“have you had enough”, might swing the race to the Democratic candidate. Are there enough of these races so that the idea of Republican moral bankruptcy can make a difference? This is where the minutia of polling data becomes important. Since I don’t have access to that information, I’ll have to punt and say, damned if I know.

  • The only thing we need to fear…is smear itself. It’s the Energizer Bunny of the Republican party. It keeps on working.

  • Yeah, is someone is taking a psychological approach and making a psychological appeal, you have to answer that. You have to look at what the other person is doing and prioritize that. You can rely on making a rational appeal, but if you’re just ignoring the opponent’s psychological appeal, does that get you anywhere? You have to decide what you’re going to do to answer the other side’s thing and you have to know why your reply is going to be adequate. You can’t just assume that a rational appeal alone is going to be adequate to answer the emotional message in the eyes of every voter. And just saying “Ha! That won’t work on me!” isn’t any kind of an answer.

    The Republicans are manipulating people. If someone comes to you when you’re in a bad way and says they’ll take care of you, then it resounds with you more than if someone else comes to you and says they have a lot of money so you should count on them because other people might have less. Even if the first person is insincere but the second one isn’t, the first one is saying it more in the way you need to hear. We need to tell people that we’ll take care of them, not just give them a list of facts.

  • Deep down, we’re tribal monkeys. Thinking things through and realizing that the GOP is a perfect match for ‘agents of Satan’ (rather you believe in that fallen one or not) is not typically in our nature. That is why nearly infinite examples of dishonest and stupid have still not dragged that winged version of Curious George’s poll numbers below 40%.

    In relative terms, he is a staggeringly unpopular president, but there are still a sizeable chunk of monkeys who can’t get past the fact that he is part of their self proclaimed clan.

    Plan A, we use the 60% to take back the government and then use the legal system to put as many of these evil criminals in prison as possible. Granted, like all mean monkeys they will fling feces at us when you go to gawk at them in their cages – but cages are were they belong.

    Plan B? Who knows…

    -jjf

  • The problem with representative government is that when a near majority of the population is unconcerned that its government tortures… the government becomes an instrument of that moral blindness.
    What’s wrong with the Republicans is the smaller question.
    The bigger question is what’s wrong with our country, that so many of our citizens are morally handicapped.

  • The bigger lesson is that to err is human.

    However, the smaller lesson is that Republicans can also screw up elections. This is political dynamite.

    Take for inistance my House race here in Colorado, where Democrat Angie Paccione is challenging incumbent Republican Representative Marilyn Musgrave. MM said at a Dobson-lead Focus on the Family meeting that ‘protecting (heterosexual) marrige is the most important issue facing America’. Now it turns out that members of the Republican leadership are enablers for a colleague who was trying, and possibly succeeding, in seducing underage male pages.

    So they are against stable unions between consenting adults of the same sex but support predatory homosexual behavior if it furthers their political ends.

    What will Dobson say? Will social conservatives be more or less likely to vote this time after learning of this behavior.

    And one last thought.

    The son of a friend of mine worked in Washington as a page. I should say that I have the greatest respect for this man and his family, but they are true believers in MM and the Republican Party. I just wonder what he is thinking right now.

  • “What more, exactly, would someone need as proof to see that the modern-day GOP has lost its moral compass and completely fallen apart?”

    For the sane folks: Please, no more. We’re feeling nauseous enough as it is. Some of us have felt so since January 2001.

    For the die-hard 35%: Voting pro-choice or for equal rights for gay people.

    So f__k ’em.

    p.s. The Foley story has been front page, above the fold in the Washington Post for two days now.

  • And this morning, the GOP leadership, like a pack of rabid jackels, is tearing Mark Foley to pieces — just so everyone will know how much they hate ephebophilic tendencies among their fellow Repubs. Or at least they do, now. Excuse me if this sounds personal, but these guys are slime.

  • To describe the landscape of my family and social circle, I believe I will invoke the “Pogo Principal” and state that “We have met the enemy and he is us.” People are simply too wrapped up in living their lives to notice the morass of lies and corruption that is the Republican party. Expand CB’s seven day window of shame back two more days and you can sweep in the testimony of General Bastiste and two of his contemporaries before the hearing convened by Senator Byron Dorgan. These men – who have held key positions in the military’s efforts in Iraq – basically said the military cannot succeed in Iraq under and is likely to be broken by the policy and management style of Donald Rumsfeld. Their testimony was scorching – even though the men did not advocate a time table for withdrawal and still believe the war can be “won.” I can just about guarantee that no one I know is even aware that hearing took place – let alone what was said. I include in that group the Gen X/Y’ers in my family who are opposed to Bush. I can plead with people to call their representatives, but they won’t. The truth is they feel sorry for me – Don Quixote – tilting at the windmill that is my government. They do not see the government as an extension of themselves. If they leave it “over there” doing “whatever it does or does not do,” they do not have to feel any responsibility for it. In truth, they are taken in by the language of Bill Bennett and George W. Bush: “If water boarding saves American lives, I’m for water boarding.” “We fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.” The simple logic of those statements give both comfort and absolution. It enables a person to simply get on with his or her life without thinking critically about what those slogans mean.

    So, I merely have stopped talking about politics among friends and family (other than the Gen X/Y’ers) and come here for hope and encouragement. Today I hope that my country can weather this storm. My fellow citizens seem disinclined to acknowledge that storm, so I am not optimistic they will take action to try to steer out of it.

  • At the top, in terms of policies, credibility, ethics, the Republican party can safely be described as bankrupt.

    At the local level, where elections are won and lost, the machine is ticking over nicely. They have loads of money, volunteers, commitment, strategies, data – whatever they need. See here for example: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1541237,00.html

    I’m kind of a manic-depressive about politics, and lately, despite the never-ending trail of of outrages and embarrassments that CB describes, I’ve taken a turn to depressiveness. The GOP has figured out US politics. Motivate your base, get them to the polls, de-motivate the opposition. In a time of widespread apathy and, yes, Democratic incoherence & fecklessness, that seems enough to keep them in office for years to come. I hope and pray I’m wrong.

  • Well, there’s always this, as reported in today’s LA Times, to prove that no matter how bad those scumballs are, the morons of the Christian Right are still willing to break the laws about political involvement by churches to help them.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-churchvote1oct01,0,7179475.story?coll=la-home-headlines

    With a pivotal election five weeks away, leaders on the religious right have launched an all-out drive to get Christians from pew to voting booth. Their target: the nearly 30 million Americans who attend church at least once a week but did not vote in 2004.

    Their efforts at times push legal limits on church involvement in partisan campaigns. That is by design. With control of Congress at stake Nov. 7, those guiding the movement say they owe it to God and to their own moral principles to do everything they can to keep social conservatives in power.
    Preachers “ought to put their toe right on the line,” said Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit law firm that supports conservative Christian causes.

    The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical in Texas, has recruited 5,000 “patriot pastors” nationwide to promote an agenda that aligns neatly with Republican platforms. “We urge them to avoid legal entanglement, but there are times in a pastor’s life when he needs to take a biblical stand,” Scarborough said. “Our higher calling is to Christ.”

    The campaign encourages individual pastors to use sermons, Bible studies and rallies to drive Christians to the polls — and, by implication or outright endorsement, to Republican candidates. One online guide to discussing the election in church, produced by the Focus on the Family ministry, offers this tip: If a congregant says her top concerns are healthcare and national security, suggest that Jesus would make abortion and gay marriage priorities.

    At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson told a crowd of 3,000 that it would be “downright frightening” if Republicans lost control of Congress. If there’s a good Christian on the ballot, he said, failing to vote “would be a sin.”

    And heaven knows, even Foley went to chruch regularly and prayed for forgivennes, right? And Abramoff tithed himself of his ill-gotten gains to support a religious school, right?

    These fuckers are unstoppable, until you put a 30-30 hole in the middle of the “third eye.”

  • It’s difficult to see the GOP generating an October Surprise of the order of these very real scandals that are sucking up the GOP in their own gravity. The aura of invincibility is pierced, which puts into question dear leader’s divinity, and the clear line distinctions of “with us or against us” blur when Republicans turn on their own. True believers, who have looked away at every piece of corruption, now find themselves having to excuse homosexual pedophilia. The media refs, as brutal as they have been, are finding it difficult to clamp down on every bad story to control the narrative – an explosive revelation pops up before they can drive the narrative in their poll tested direction with the echoe chamber. Worst of all, the GOP is no longer looking like a finely oiled political machine to be feared, but inept, stupid, and clumsy, emboldening the opposition, and allowing long, submerged grievances to bubble up.

    We have reached critical mass, folks. The regime has lost control, and there is simply no way to get it back. The only question now is how much damage they do in their desperation.

  • The message is pretty clear — neither political party can be trusted to control all branches of government. The Republicans are just so repulsive because they are so hypocritical about it — claiming the moral and ethical banner while undermining both. The Foley incident is so emblematic of it. Label him the poster boy of Republican hypocrisy.

    Plus, the Republicans have now revealed fully their weakness on national defense while claiming the mantle of strength.

    Let this be the rallying cry of the Republicans: “Yes, the world is still unsafe and the threat of terror still exists, but only we can keep it that way!”

  • The Foley Scandal may have swayed one conservative. Tom Shakely is a Penn State student and a self-described young conservative, pro-life Catholic who has a blog. You can get a sense of his politics here and here. His take on Foley and the Republican leadership?

    News came out last night that Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republicans election effort, knew of Rep. Foley’s emails to a Congressional Page and had alerted other Congress members. Reynolds informed Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert “months ago” about his concerns, but Hastert’s office referred the matter to others and called the emails nothing but “overly-friendly.”
    It is only now, AFTER Foley has received widespread public scorn that the Republicans are publicly renouncing his actions. Rep. “Overly-Friendly” Hastert has now released statements such as “The improper communications between Congressman Mark Foley and former House Congressional pages is unacceptable and abhorrent. It is an obscene breach of trust.” It is time to hold our political representatives accountable, and let them know that only admonishing those who get caught is wrong. Any reasonable person who reads copies of those emails immediately knows that something isn’t right. It makes us wonder, what other issues is the party keeping under the rug?

    I am curious, will Mr. Shakely continue to support Santorum?

  • from Talking Points Memo:
    TPM Reader JA asks: “If the GOP can’t even keep a bunch of 15 year olds safe, how can they keep America safe?”

    — TPM Reader DK

    Attack, attack, attack.

  • Look, these are the people who will let your kids be at risk if they think it hurts them politically until they think someone will notice. Can’t tell that to people? Can’t get them to think about it that way?

    It’s as simple as noticing that we’ve got a bunch of people in power who don’t care about this country’s welfare at all. They only care about it as far as they can say that everything they’re already doing is right.

  • All people have skeletons in their closet. The naive tend to believe that those in public office are different, they are not. You will find the same percentage of murders, rapist, thieves, pedophiles, etc., in public service including the police, fire, military, FBI and CIA, -among many others- as the general population. That is why, in my opinion, both the democrats and republicans both suck. It is crazy to support a ‘party’. We need a third party, we need to never re-elect an incumbent no matter how good a ‘job’ they are doing. Throw them out and give the next person a chance. It is wrong for politicians to have the audacity to think they are good enough to be re-elected. People are naive, just look at our current government that supposedly represent us, do they really?

  • With the Republicans it’s no longer party over country, now it’s party over all common decency.

  • Interesting: I posted a simple question on “RhymeswithRight” blog. Since the posting concluded with the point that the scandal wasn’t so bad because GOP leadership didn’t know about how bad the emails were (i.e., explicit IMs, which came out later), I ask: ‘Why, if the GOP leadership thought this was such a simple issue, did they exclude the only Democrat from the House Page Committee last April when the matter was discussed?’–The blog deleted the comment shortly after it appeared.

    I take this to mean that the issue really does bother many Republicans as much as it bothers other non-Republicans. There’s a good piece in today’s NYTimes about how the GOP is already starting its microtargeting campaign to get-out-the-vote, and another in today’s NYTimes Op-Ed about how the GOP can speak more on-message because more of their message rings true in the US (since the US is basically a conservative country, politically). I’d add to all of this that the political lines have been drawn harder and tighter to accommodate just this type of campaign.

    So here’s the dilemma–and I’m purposely trying to avoid hyperbole and hyperventilation–but it is tough. This GOP House leadership set is just not going to apologize. They would have actually gotten some real politcial credit for saying “we had an earlier chance to deal with this, we’re really sorry we didn’t sieze this opportunity, and we join with our Democratic members in expressing our shock, disappointment and determination to see that this never, ever happens again.” They cannot bring themselves to do it because they’re worried about election fallout.

    Funny thing, though. Election fallout happens precisely because people begin to see real life disconnects in their elected representatives.

  • Randy J — The phrase “concern troll” seems to be bandied about a lot recently and I was tempted to do the same with you. But, I have a better idea. How about We the people infiltrate the Democratic party and take it over.

  • I try to be fair–I just realized I’d mischaraterized the “RhymeswithRight” blog and said they erased the question I asked–it’s still there. It’s just unanswered.

  • You know, though, after reading through a bunch of stuff, here, Dailykos, and particularly TPM and Greenwald’s look at things, I am willing to make a bet about Foley’s legal issues.

    Simply put, I bet there won’t be any legal fallout, because he covered himself well. Think about it. This guy has been at the helm of all of the laws covering relationships/contact/etc. with minors. Certain moves on his part- e.g. contacting the pages only via personal e-mail (that gets around misuse of official government e-mail) and only when they reached the age of consent, 16 in D.C. and most other places- indicate someone who was very aware of the laws, and who worked very carefully to avoid any problems with that (the political issue, of course, is an entirely different question).

    That being said, I think that this raises a profound issue which I have yet to see anyone expound upon- that of a lawmaker and possible predator actually creating the loopholes for himself to be able to NOT commit crimes…(If that doesn’t make enough sense on it’s own, a more extreme analogy would be a congressman making it legal to rob banks, and then going out and robbing them).

    If politicians are really interested in protecting our children, then they really need to look over, again, every single Child Protection law which Congress has written since Foley came into power, and look for those loopholes which I can promise you are there.

  • “The Foley Scandal may have swayed one conservative. Tom Shakely is a Penn State student and a self-described young conservative, pro-life Catholic”

    Sorry you can’t be pro-life and a huge supporter of the Republican party-that’s called being a hypocrite-especially in light of the torture bill. And he called Clinton a jackass for defending himself on Fox about 9/11/Bin Ladin. So don’t think we can count on this boy (nor many other “Christians”) being swayed no matter what the Repubs do.

  • Caster Troy,

    I agree someone like Foley would’ve been in a good position to know how to skirt the law without getting pinned down hard, but I think this may be a case of unbelievable hubris. I’d bet he just thought, since he’d been getting away with this behavior for a while, he’d continue to be able to in the future. He probably also didn’t know IMs could be recorded/retrieved (I must admit, they sometimes seemed ethereal to me when they’ve appeared on my phone).

    Unlike many partisans here, however, I don’t see this as a ‘GOP’ issue, per se, but as a ‘GOP leadership’ issue. No one has given an adequate answer to either of the questions I’ve asked here–why did the GOP exclude the House Page committee Democrat and how is it possible that all the pages knew about Foley but his colleagues didn’t?

    Your point about reviewing laws for loopholes is interesting. But my fear here is that the GOP leadership would jump on this as a welcome distraction, so they could move back to just blaming Foley and not taking one shred of blame themselves.

  • Elections have nothing to do with American politics. They’re just another sport where who wins or loses, has no effect on overall policy. A welcome break from sunday monkeyball….bread & circus

    SPQR Senatus Populous Que Romanus> Senate & People of Rome

  • They’ll win — they may win, against all reason — in the sense that they won’t lose, because it’s a herd thing. It’s blind allegiance. Better to belong and be wrong than not to belong at all. Safety in numbers.

    The politics, the scandal, the incompetence are so much water off ducks’ backs. It’s the gang that counts. The mindless enthusiasm of the lemming, so driven, so sure, so blind… They know that, the gang meisters. They know how youthful enthusiasm coheres in mutual stimulation when brought together and faced in the same direction. Thus they gather and align their cohorts of agents and volunteer workers. Winning is all that matters — the American speciality.

    Dismal really. But it’s shifting sands: a little bit of what you fancy does you good. Read the right blog, pick up the right paper, see the right interview and you can be up there sky-high with optimism again. Watch the wrong channel, see the wrong ad, get a glimpse of a disappointing poll and you’re way down in the dumps again. It’s rollercoaster time.

    We here cannot negate our prescience and perception of the true abhorrance of America’s slide from grace. It’s real and it’s happening. Maybe it’s unstoppable, but no halfway decent person can give up trying to help to forestall the disaster, which makes this juncture historically so critical.

    This is where mind control comes in. We have the power and the option to focus on what gives us courage and strength, not blindly or delusionally but responsibly, judiciously. We don’t have to pretend that success is inevitable, but we don’t have to defeat ourselves by wallowing in the wrong impressions. The power of mind itself, if we study, reflect and maintain perspective, collectively is very influential. You just think in the right way about something, relaxed, openly, clearly, and someone nearby does something they may not otherwise have done: one slight shift in decision-making. That, cumulatively, can have a very big effect.

  • Eric Snyder (emphasis added):

    “I agree someone like Foley would’ve been in a good position to know how to skirt the law without getting pinned down hard, but I think this may be a case of unbelievable hubris.”

    While I respect your play on words….

    “Family Values” Foley was apparently a top,
    Unless… I am not reading him correctly:

    ~~~~~~~~~~~

    “Family Values” Foley (7:53:54 PM): do you really do it face down

    Male child (7:54:03 PM): ya

    Family Values (7:54:13 PM): kneeling

    Male child (7:54:31 PM): well i dont use my hand…i use the bed itself

    Family Values (7:54:31 PM): where do you unload it

    Male child (7:54:36 PM): towel

    Family Values (7:54:43 PM): really
    Family Values (7:55:02 PM): completely naked?

    Male child (7:55:12 PM): well ya

    Family Values (7:55:21 PM): very nice

    Male child (7:55:24 PM): lol

    Family Values (7:55:51 PM): cute butt bouncing in the air

    ~~~~~~~~~~~

    What do you think?
    Top or bottom?

    Perhaps only Hastert knows for sure.

    Has anybody asked Denny yet?

  • I’d like to see a survey of what pages and interns have to say about the behavior of the politicians and staffs. I’m pretty sure they get hit on a lot by our well-coiffed “leaders”. Probably a little Peyton Place.
    .

  • Would Foley be the only one who misused power for teen-sex in Washington?

    An honest investigation should include, ” were those who knew about Foley then able to manipulate him”. (Political backmail is such a longstanding Washington tradition).

    How was Foley selected to his position on the child protection committee?
    Is any republican with knowledge of his emails directly linked to placing Foley in that position?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

  • These sorry excuses for “servants of the People” have de-evolved from a driving political force—to the equivalent of an afternoon soap opera.

    But then, maybe that’s the key to the problem. Soap operas are just packed full of the “prima donae” (bad-assed alpha-male characters) and drama queens (overacting alpha-female characters). The most popular characters always seem to be the evil ones. The more evil a character is, the more important that character is to the mesmerized legions of soap-addicts.

    remember—we’re talking about people who, by the millions, complained about “their stories” being interrupted by the Challenger tragedy, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, Oklahoma City’s Murrah building being bombed, the Waco debacle, 9/11, and the invasions of Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. These “people” (maybe they’re just pod-people—who knows?) went absolutely ballistic when the election debacle of 2000 started interrupting their “precious programs.” They go totally nucleaer whenever anything interrupts their little realms of quasi-imaginary friends—and these are the people who, regardless of truth, or common sense, or even totally-dramatic reality—will consistently support the GOP. They are the predecessors to the millions who, in Fahrenheit 451, chose to sit in front of their interactive televisions, and play actual bit-parts in the ever-shallowing, intellectual narcotic that television had become—and all the while, the realities that slumbered between the covers of even the simplest of books were being systematically incinerated by another group thought of as “servants of the people….”

  • How about another question: why aren’t the Democrats driving any of these issues? They have been completely absent on each of them except probably the one Dem that was on the Page committee.

  • Goldilocks (emphasis added):

    “We here cannot negate our prescience and perception of the true abhorrance of America’s slide from grace. It’s real and it’s happening. Maybe it’s unstoppable, but no halfway decent person can give up trying to help to forestall the disaster, which makes this juncture historically so critical.”

    We here as in “we here” at the Carpetbagger Report?

    I think that is what you meant.
    And you are right.

    The bottom line is that Steve Benen day in and day out –pound for pound and word for word– presents a litany of news that every informed America simply cannot live without… and if you give a damn about the “Great Experiment,” can hardly live with…

    Benen… like Josh Micah Marshall… is fast becoming an American hero.

    Really it all begs the question:

    What would I. F. Stone be doing now if he was alive when the Internet was young?

  • The Battle for Your Mind
    Propaganda, PR and PsyOps
    Quotron

    “What we observe in the population today are the three destructive symptoms of persons whose minds are controlled by alien forces: 1. Amnesia, i.e. loss of memory. 2. Abulia, i.e. loss of will. 3. Apathy, i.e. loss of interest in events vital to one’s own health and survival.” Michael A. Hoffman II

    http://lkwdpl.org/wildideas/propaganda.html

  • Wow.
    This is moving very fast now. CNN is driving this towards the GOP House Leadership and now they’ve turned it over to the Justice Department…Gonzales will have his hands full with this one.
    http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/01/foley.quits/index.htm

    This is one of the ugliest scandals I’ve seen that involved Congress. If it turns up that someone was blackmailing Foley (knew about his depravities but used this for political control), then the whole lid will blow off on this. If the GOP is lucky they can maybe throw Reynolds and Shimkus to the wolves, and have Hastert resign his leadership post after the election (not his seat). If this gets really bad, then people like Tom Delay, who purported to know ‘everything about every Republican member’ and who worked closely with Foley on several occasions, might have known about this. If something like that were true, this spins up so fast even Karl Rove won’t be able to keep up with it.

    I predict bedlam in Washington the next few days until a credible story line emerges–note I’m not saying ‘the truth’ will emerge, but something that those involved can safely stand behind.

  • Good God. After a long weekend away from television, radio, newspapers and internet access, seeing this list is terribly, terribly depressing.

    I’d like to think that the Foley scandal is something the average voter can wrap their head around. Habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions are so cerebral. The Abramhoff scandal is sort of abstract. Iraq is pretty distant to the average joe. But the local media always plays up the sexual predator scares.

    But I’m afraid it’s one more lost golden opportunity — lovingly wrapped and presented by the Republicans — for the Democrats. Democrats will dither and sit on their hands, while the Republicans will “lead” and offer some “solution” that doesn’t really do a damn thing but make matters worse.

    This is how the Republicans can campaign nationally, much less show their faces in public. They never get called on it. I have very little hope for November.

  • Brainiac,

    Go to CNN. Read their main story. This is thermonuclear for the GOP (at least the House GOP) and they know it. After loudly ‘booing’ Nancy Pelosi Friday night when she suggested the House Ethics Committee look into how the scandal was handled in the House, Hastert has now gone as far as to ask Gonzales at Justice to look into it. I don’t expect all the facts, but the House GOP is running very scared.

    Some scandals are so hot, so self-inflicted, you stand by and watch. But when the GOP leadership presented conflicting accounts early on, the Democrats spoke clearly and forcefully. In this case, Pelosi and the Democrat on the House Page Committee stood up and contradicted the vague stories from Hastert and Boehnert. If Hastert is guilty of only neglect (failure to act last year, but not because he was presented with evidence of criminal behavior), he could escape with his seat and a graceful exit from House Leadership. But this is now looking like the worst political nightmare for those involved, whoever they turn out to be.

    One more thing: remember that the House has very restrictive rules for the minority party–more so when Delay consolidated power, but there has always been less power for the minority than the Senate, for example. Note how the minority leader had to invoke a special rule just to ask for the vote that was ‘booed’ down Friday night.

  • koreyel,

    We here : yes, I did indeed mean “we here” at the Carpetbagger Report.

    — and also “here” in the network of complementary sites nobly engaged in this “Great Experiment”.

    You got my skin tingling with the mention of I F Stone, my great hero and source of truth in the sixties. The similarities are extraordinary.

    So maybe we’ll see a brighter dawn before too long.

    And out of courtesy I want to express my gratitude to Mr Benen without whom the darkness could be unbearable.

    Mr Benen, you are the center from which my existence as a citizen of planet Earth currently takes meaning. I truly don’t know how you do it.

  • koreyel

    TPM may be the closest thing to IF Stone’s weekly today, but Josh still has a way to go to equal Stone’s quality. Izzy tore apart government documents and like a surgeon. (I was going to say like a pig digging for a truffle. Its probably more accurate, but not very attractive, and Stone is my hero.)

    Eric Snyder

    ‘I predict bedlam in Washington the next few days…’

    That probably is true, but remember, Congress has just adjourned and members are busy in their districts with their campaigns.

    This couldn’t happen at a worse time for Republicans. The first question that any member of the press will ask is what do you think about Foley.

    It will be difficult to coordinate a common message from Washington and each Republican pol will know that it is every man/woman for themself.

  • Does anybody know if anyone at the Values Summit has given an interview about the Foley thing? If they cheer torture they must be ecstatic about this. (snark)

  • Koreyel-

    Good point about campaigning and questions asked on the trail. But how would you like to be a GOP member (or a key member of their staff) and get called back to Washington by either the FBI or the House Ethics Committee? Doesn’t go over well with the voters.

    I’m guessing many of those at risk (GOP Leaders in House) and other key participants will voluntarily stay behind to try to wrap it up quickly–if they can. That way they’ll avoid the spectacle of the ‘political perp walk’ back to D.C.

  • No one has given an adequate answer to either of the questions I’ve asked here–why did the GOP exclude the House Page committee Democrat and how is it possible that all the pages knew about Foley but his colleagues didn’t? — Eric Snyder (#48)

    re 1st question: my guess would be that they hoped they could get away with the cover up but not if the Dem knew about it. Dems are spinless in general but you can’t count on it; he might have raised a stink.

    re 2nd question: most kids tend to hang together and exclude adults. When I was in highschool, we had one teacher who “went after boys” and two others who “went after girls”. All the kids in school knew about it and the warnings went out every year to the freshmen (all three guys preyed mostly on the first two years — those kids were easier to cow in, I suppose). But we didn’t tell anyone in the adult world. The parents? Might have said “are you sure you didn’t misunderstand? Are you sure you didn’t do anything to invite such advances?” The other teachers? We never thought we’d be believed. It was better, we thought, to take care of ourselves the best we could. (like: never, ever, agre to a private “conference” to discuss your work, without having a friend or two sit and wait for you right outside the door — and make sure the teacher knew it)

    Of course, we had no proof — unlike those boys in the page program. And it was 40 yrs ago (and in Poland) — in those days, pedophilia was not a frequently discussed subject; it wasn’t something that could be believed of a teacher, either. We were fairly smart politically-speaking (nobody doubted, for example, that every letter was read, every telephone conversation monitored and that police beat people up for no reason), but very innocent otherwise.

    There’s also this: when you’re 15, 16, 17, unwelcome advances make you feel both scared and “dirty” (the boy who got the — only faintly creepy — e-mails described them as “sick, sick, sick”). It’s not something you want to share with adults, who might not understand it or minimize it or something. Afterall, every teenager knows for certain-sure that parents know squat about life.

  • libra,

    I’ll buy parts of you answer to why the pages all knew and House members didn’t know–but only up to a point. The one boy from LA who went public DID tell his parents and that’s what might have been swept under the rug. Since the page program has been around a long time and the last rule change was under Democratic leadership (apparently before 1994), I’d say the general program structure is no fault of the GOP (as far as I’ve read/heard). But how they handled a realistic threat to it seems to be what everyone, including the FBI and Justice Department, will now be looking into.

    The answer to the first question is one many GOP supporters are in denial about–why throw out the lone Democrat on the House Page Committee if you’re not hiding something. I know partisan relationships are strained in the House and have been for at least 5-10 years, but one of the best ways to insulate yourself if you think something might be as radioactive as a scandal with House pages is to be forthcoming. I’m shocked the House GOP decided, at whatever level, to hide behind a partisan wall on something like this. There’s no good reason I can think of to have excluded the Democrat from the Committee’s discussions.

  • For every 16-year-old page who comes forward with his/her own accounts of importuning by members of Congress, there must be ten others who said nothing because they were blinded by the stars in their eyes. Who knows how far this goes?

  • Eric (#60),

    The CNN story does seem pretty damning, and maybe Dems will pull this one out.

    But Congress is in recess, it’s the home-stretch of the mid-term election, and any investigation coming from the Bush White House is going to exonerate House GOP leaders.

    I think you very succinctly captured the Democratic strategy for the last 5 years when you wrote: “Some scandals are so hot, so self-inflicted, you stand by and watch.”

    Which is how we got to where we are today — take your pick of the scandals. Dems sat back hoping the Republicans would self-destruct instead of administering a few well-placed and well-deserved kicks while they were down. I’d love to see a series of ads from the DNCC linking Republican lawmakers to GOP leaders who covered up for a pedophile. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.

  • Chris Carney (D) who is challenging Republican Congressman Don Sherwood in Pennsylvania shows us how the Foley scandal can used to Democratic advantage in November in a district where an incumbent is weak. Via John Nichols at the Nation

    Hastert and Boehner are scheduled to attend fund-raising events on behalf of embattled Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Don Sherwood in coming weeks. Sherwood’s Democratic challenger, Chris Carney, a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy Reserve who served as a senior advisor on intelligence and counterterrorism issues at the Pentagon, has asked the Republican congressman to cancel the events. “Holding happy hour fundraisers with people who cover-up the cyber-molestation of children should be below even the questionable morals of Don Sherwood,” explained Carney campaign manager Andrew Eldredge-Martin. “Sherwood should immediately cancel his upcoming fundraisers with Hastert and Boehner. Don Sherwood has already brought Washington’s values back to the district, now he wants to bring a depraved cover-up home.”

  • Attack! Attack! Attack! and when they’ve developed their spin, switch gears and Attack! Attack! Attack!

    I was appalled at the microphone time Russert gave DeWine today. To say nothing.

  • Brainiac,

    Be careful what you wish for. I’ve tried really hard to be level-headed about this (I’ve looked at a few rightside blogs saying this is a Democratic conspiracy, and a few leftside blogs that are a bit too gleeful). What we don’t know is, if they really investigate the whole page program thoroughly, would they find more cases of abuse that are bipartisan? I’m not saying they will, and I hope for our own sake as a country they don’t, but people in power do some strange and terrible things sometimes (I grew up just outside of D.C. and know a lot about the environment there).

    The Democratic leadership is acting responsibly here so far–they’re asking for probes and accountability. This is good. If there’s a stonewalling by GOP House Leaders (or by the Gonzales Justice Department), then the GOP would be committing long-term suicide and I think they realize this.

    This issue is different; it’s actually more damaging to the Repbulicans’ base (and honest Republicans admit this) than automatically *helpful* to any Democrat, save the one running in Foley’s old district. Note how fast the coverage is moving for a weekend. Note how much time the GOP has had to spend just making sure their stories were straight, lest they look guilty of a coverup. So far the GOP leadership seems to think the way your post suggests–Democrats will let this blow over.

    Here’s how I see it: either the GOP leadership gets really forthcoming quickly and limits the damage to Foley and maybe Reynolds (possibly Shimkus), and if Hastert was found negligent, Haster’s leadership post—OR–face an angry electorate already dismayed at Congress and potentially face further Democratically led investigations in January. I think they’ll start to talk.

  • Eric- You raise an interesting question. An honest and professional investigation of any aspect of ethical behavior in today’s congress is likely to embarrass both Repubs and Democrats (with the party in power will be more tanished).
    After the Dems take control the climate will be ripe to Clean House and the Senate… with investigations of wrongdoing (by both parties) and restore honor and trust to our government. I have no loyalty to Democratic bums.

  • If it turns up that someone was blackmailing Foley (knew about his depravities but used this for political control) — Eric Snyder @ 58

    This, from ThinkProgress:

    1) “Reynolds’s personal PAC, TOMPAC, wrote Foley a check for $5,000 on May 10, 2006.”

    2) “On July 27, 2006, the [National Republican Congressional Committee], which Reynolds chairs, accepted an unusually large contribution of $100,000 from Foley. Hard to imagine something of that size just slipping past the chairman.”

    Since both monetary exchanges happened after Reynolds had been informed of Foley’s follies… To me, it “smells” like Reynolds is saying to Foley: “we’ll take care of the problem for you”. And Foley says to Reynolds: “I’m mega-grateful”

    Not a direct blackmail, perhaps, but a case of — as we used to say in Poland — “hand washes a hand”. I think the English equivalent is something about back-scrubbing (can’t be sure though; that one sounds Polish to me also, since we use it sometimes).

    Regarding my (@65) posting: I never thought my answers would be definitive but, since I had, myself, been at the receiving end of unwelcome advances from a superior (teacher, in my case) during my teen years, they might feed into a bigger picture of why kids might act one way and not another. There are always many strands in a plait of life, and that is but one of them 🙂

    If you were to visit TPMmuckraker, you’d see some others: the Pages had been told how to react to come-ons but Foley sent his messages during the summer, after the program was over, so the kids felt less threatened (indeed, some of the IM exchanges sound like the kids were willing participants in the titillating pictures of sexual acts, unlike the recipient of the e-mails)

    The whole thing is ugly. *All* the news about Repubs are ugly and I wish they weren’t coming in quite as thickly; I’m still sick at heart (and in the tum) about the Torture Bill and I wish we had more time to — fully — digest that one before we moved on to other grazing pastures…

  • The news is still getting worse. I thought we knew the worst, but it sounds like a supervisor in the House Clerk’s Office warned pages about Foley as early as 2001-2002 (acc. to ABCNEWS). One of the same reports says pages to Democrats weren’t warned. This says two things, neither of which I’d think the House GOP Leadership would ever want to be asked. If they knew that far back and risked letting Foley prey on Democratic Reps’ pages, they played the most cynical political game there is. If they felt they could just ‘warn’ their own pages and not confront Foley more aggressively, then this is probably worse for them, at least politically.

    I think I know why they excluded the Democratic Rep when the House Clerk and Shimkus confronted Foley in April: they’d been dealing with him for some time and didn’t want the Democratic member of the House Page Committee to know how long. I was honestly hoping I was wrong about this, but it sounds so typical. Any business office would fire ALL supervisors who acted this way about something like sexual harassment, let alone harassment of a 16 year old.

    The House GOP leadership may all be doomed if this is really true.

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