{"id":8663,"date":"2006-10-05T09:44:14","date_gmt":"2006-10-05T13:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8663.html"},"modified":"2006-10-05T09:44:14","modified_gmt":"2006-10-05T13:44:14","slug":"the-gops-principal-talking-point-bites-the-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-gops-principal-talking-point-bites-the-dust\/","title":{"rendered":"The GOP’s principal talking point bites the dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve seen and heard a few doozies over the last week as conservatives have mounted a counter-attack against the Mark Foley sex scandal — blaming the GOP for political correctness is my personal favorite — but the principal argument<\/strike> theory is that Dems are behind the whole sordid mess.<\/p>\n

The theory has always lacked a certain coherence, but in a nutshell, the right believes Dems had the Foley messages, and released them to ABC last week to win the elections. It’s why you’ll hear plenty of conservatives — including<\/a> House Speaker Dennis Hastert himself — suggest the FBI investigate the Dems’<\/em> role in the scandal, because they believe the left knew Foley was a sexual predator but chose not to do anything to protect the pages.<\/p>\n

We learned a couple of days ago that this theory is simply false<\/a>. ABC News’ Brian Ross, who broke the story, said, “I hate to give up sources, but to the extent that I know the political parties of any of the people who helped us, it would be the same party,” referring to Republicans. Likewise, Ross’ producer, Maddy Sauer, added, “They were passed to a colleague of mine from a source, not someone from a Democratic campaign, a source on the Hill.”<\/p>\n

So, who was the original source? Sorry, Republicans, but you’ll have to look inward<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.<\/p>\n

That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.<\/p>\n

The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House. But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t necessarily expect all of those conservatives who blamed the Dems to apologize now, but I think it’s safe to say the GOP is officially out of talking points.<\/p>\n

Not that they’ll let a little thing like a lack of substance get in the way.
\n<\/p>\n

These revelations mean that Republicans who are calling for probes to discover what Democratic leaders and staff knew about Foley’s improper exchanges with under-age pages will likely be unable to show that the opposition party orchestrated the scandal now roiling the GOP just a month away from the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) yesterday called for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) to testify about what and when they knew of Foley’s contact with former pages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It even reached a point yesterday in which Fox News’ Sean Hannity said<\/a> AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis should be investigated, so the FBI can learn what he<\/em> knew about Foley and when.<\/p>\n

Look, this is all pretty silly. The sooner Republicans realize that this is a Republican scandal, through and through, and that Dems have literally nothing to do with it, the better. Because, frankly, at this point, their defenses are just kind of sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve seen and heard a few doozies over the last week as conservatives have mounted a counter-attack against the Mark Foley sex scandal — blaming the GOP for political correctness is my personal favorite — but the principal argument theory is that Dems are behind the whole sordid mess. The theory has always lacked a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}