It occurred to me, while I was chatting with some of the GOP operatives who work in my office building during a smoke break that this is ultimately not an interparty issue. Forget Hastert’s nattering about the liberal media and George Soros (read: Jewish investment bankers, a nod to his Klan base). Democrats really don’t have a whole lot of actual interest in this issue. We think it’s hysterically funny to watch the GOP implode, but I really doubt this will have much effect on either registered Democrats or independent voters.
This is all about the Republican base. They’re not influenced by ABC News or Democratic schadenfreude or anything we (meaning the left) might have to say on the matter for the simple reason that they get their news from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. It’s these people whose opinions matter, and they simply don’t listen to what the “liberal media” says unless Rush quotes it out of context to them. To them, sexual impropriety is a first-order concern, orders of magnitude more important than, say, bombing the hell out of a bunch of non-Christian brown people. They dig the massacre of innocents; what they don’t care for is anyone having fun with their penis, especially orally or anally. They don’t like the underage aspect, either, but considering the blind eye that most churchgoers turn to the sexual abuse of women and children in their own communities, it’s probably not their main concern. They’re a lot more worried about their children being “converted” by the “lavender lobby” than they are worried about good, clean heterosexual rape. You can see that much in the attempts by some on the GOP side to suggest that Foley was “lured” by these kids, or the performance of conservative talk shows when popular sports figures are accused of rape. There really isn’t much rape in their worldview, just lying bitches who don’t know their place out to trap men.
And that is, ultimately, why the GOP can’t stop the bleeding with the base. (It’s also why the left is wasting its time talking about child molestation to an audience that doesn’t actually care much about the subject.) Foley was caught trying to arrange GAY SEX (with kids), and practically the entire GOP leadership, the same people who showed up for neo-fascist events like Justice Sunday, knew about all this GAY SEX and covered it up. The frothing religious fanatics who form the Bush-Rove base have every right to be pissed off because they have, in fact, been betrayed. It’s the base calling for Hastert’s resignation, and if the Washington Times is any indication, they were calling for it well before opportunists on the left jumped on the bandwagon.
Don’t expect them to vote for Democrats. There are too many openly GAY Dems in Congress (having consensual sex with people their own age, but that’s beside the point). Do expect some to stay home, or spend their votes on regional neofascist parties like the Constitution Party. It won’t take many, either, because the whole GOP (read: Rovian) strategy over the last umpteen years is to simply maintain a slim majority in the 51-52% range instead of the Clintonian (and in its own way, equally nauseating) centrist approach, which for all of its flaws left a sizeable margin for error and defections.
I can see your point to a degree BUT I still think that we add to the destruction of the GOP support when “indies/moderates/soccer moms/etc.” are factored into it.
We may not ever reach the ears and eyes of the hardcore GOP “base”, but our efforts do help to fracture any non-brainwashed GOP supporters and we can help to keep them off of the right-wing-crack for years to come.
That may be true, but I think we’re also laying mines for ourselves if we continue to place great emphasis on sexual impropriety as a career-breaking political event. It’s not as if there aren’t probably plenty of Congressional Dems whose private affairs, if known, would energize the other side’s base to come out and vote against us in large numbers. (And yes, I do recognize the difference in magnitude between Foley’s misconduct and the usual adultery and philandering.) Even in this case alone, too much Dem cheerleading could lend credence to the paranoid right wing notion that the timing was specifically engineered to be an October Surprise.
The real issue here isn’t Foley at all, but the coverup and the lack of integrity it signifies. I think the GOP base is focused properly on that even if the reasons for the focus are wrongheaded.
The reaction is instructive in this sense, though: integrity matters when it matters. The base doesn’t care if their leaders lied about the war because they generally approve of the prospect of bombing the heathen. They may, in fact, accept the lying as necessary to slip stuff past the left. As far as the base is concerned, the GOP is lying to us, not them. With the Foley coverup, though, the GOP has been caught lying to the base. That matters.
Interesting analysis… The same conclusion shows up in a recent Pew Research survey: little political impact following Foley’s resignation.
and P. S.:
I’d like to read another WTF – US-UK.
Golly, I didn’t think anyone remembered! I’ll try to think of a new one.
You are absolutely correct.
The “authoritarian” portion of Bush’s base views existance thru the lens of Cartesian Dualism: life as pairs of opposits: male/female, good/evil, right/wrong, dominant/submissive. Where this mindset meets hierachical “power over” relationships, a very sick vision of sexuality emerges. There is no room in this world view for feminist/humanist definitions of sexuality as mutual, equal, passionate love making.
The authoritarian model has to have a doer and a doee because there are only opposits, never a continuum, only ranking, never equality. To them, homosexuality threatens the bedrock (no pun intended) of their identity and vision; the fucked must never, never be male. The very notion that it is possible for a man to be fucked upsets their belief system.
Where we see a pedophile misusing power for his sexual gratification, they see the horrors of male/male sex. That is the sin, not abuse of power. They believe that those in authority are entitled to use their power any way they please. (See Bush, G.W.). They would not be up in arms if Foley had married a 13 year old girl with the blessing of her father.