So for a party that crusades against gay marriage and welcomes voters that consider homosexuality a sin or a disease, headlines about a gay Republican congressman lusting after underage male congressional pages are a problem.- Eugene Robinson
Oedipus Moment:
Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog, thundered on the group’s Web site yesterday that “House leaders permitted homosexuals to infiltrate and manipulate the party apparatus while they publicly postured as friends of family values and traditional marriage. The facade is now in ruins.”
Getting drunk and trolling for young boys ain’t all about traditional marriage or Dan Quayle’s values. That’s for sure. But nobody in the GOP leadership seems to have cared. Especially not Rep. Jim Kolbe, who was told six years ago, and didn’t address Foley’s perversion at all. Or maybe he did. Who knows?
There’s a lot of finger-pointing. Hastert is threatening to fire members of his staff. He shouldn’t do that. Look what happened to Tom Reynolds when he fired his staffer. Goodbye Tom.
For that matter, why is Andy Card giving Bob Woodward nasty information about George Dubya? The last thing this administration needs is Bob Woodward hawking a book about how clueless they are right now.
In any case, the press isn’t buying what the Republicans are selling and the President is pissed off.
This BushIdiot is a real pussy. He has the power to shut this harmful scandal down in an instant.
He just declares Haster, Foley, Brian Ross, Kolbe and ever body else an ‘enemy combatant’ and renders ’em all to Uzbekistan.
End of scandal and he can git back to ‘fixin’ Social Security.
It is times like these that GWB is ever so glad he has Diebold to rely upon.
[snark]
Hey, be sure to check those absentee ballots too. Over at the orange place there was a diary talking about not only Faux news inserting D after repubs names like Foley now people are getting their ballots in the mail and they are marking the repugs as D’s too. Read everything my friends. They will stop at nothing to keep the power. Scarey!
From the comment I just left in the dKos open thread:
Any thoughts on this as a possible “October Surprise,” given that the current Republican juggernaut is fast losing steam, hasn’t an original idea of its own, and likes to respin new variants on old CYA techniques that have worked for them in the past?
They seem stuck to me. Dumping Rummy won’t earn them a whole lot of good will. Naming Lieberman Defense Secretary would cost them a valuable vote in the Senate, and give them someone else in charge of (or as ranking member of) the Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee.
Cheney isn’t going anywhere. Rice isn’t going anywhere. No one would give a shit about any other moves.
If it were me, I’d tell Cheney to resign and replace him with John Warner. That would be a popular move. First, I’d get the Democratic Governor of Virginia to agree to replace Warner with a Republican as part of a deal to jettison Cheney.
But Cheney is Bush’s insurance against impeachment, so he won’t do it.
Interesting insights.
…I agree that they’re stuck, and anything deemed as “a major shakeup” is most likely to be smoke and mirrors — I doubt they’ll do anything ~actually~ substantial.