[Grovenet] bad politics

[allnutt]

I talked about Studds earlier, even though I didn't mention him by name.
By mentioned that the D representative and his younger page continued their 
relationship for many years afterward and that voters could see that it was 
a case of two people taking a genuine interest in each other rather than a 
sordid affair. K took that to mean that I believe that sex with minors is 
okay, which of course is a stretch of what I actually said.

K also claims that he is taking a 'wait and see 'attitude about Foley.  He 
is entitled to do that.
So far no evidence (nada, zip, zilch) has come out that any D's were 
involved.
Evidently the parents of the republican page were alarmed at his e-mails 
even though they were not the most disgusting of the ones he had written.
They tried to take it to a Florida newspaper but the newspaper didn't think 
they rose to any high level of newsworthiness.
They tried to take it to another newspaper but again no publication.
So they took it to Brian Ross.  At the time his plate was full with Katrina 
anniversary stories that had a hard deadline and he didn't have time to 
pursue it immediately (this is what lead to the claims that the story was 
'held back' to a more damaging time but heck if you have a dead line with 
one story and no dead line with another what would you reasonably expect him 
to do?)
After the Katrina anniversary, Ross look at the e-mails and also figured 
they were not worthy of a TV news bit but he did decide to put it on the web 
page as a news item that left lots of things open to interpretation.  That's 
when the you know what hit the fan.  Then other e-mails from other pages 
with more damaging evidence started pouring into Brian Ross and ABC.  At 
that point in time ABC knew they were on to something. They called Foley 
office and read just a bit of one of the e-mails from the other pages. The 
Foley person on the other end of the line said I'll call you back in an 
hour.  They did call back in an hour and tried to make a deal with ABC that 
if ABC didn't print the content of the e-mails they would give ABC the 
exclusive story that Foley was resigning that day.  ABC said no and then 
Foley resigned and all the finger pointing started within the Republican 
party.

So far there has been a lot of innuendo that democrats were 'behind' this.
Hastert has tried to lob George Soros into the fray, Rush says it was 
democratic plot all along, and Krystof says he wouldn't be surprised if D 
operatives were involved.

I'll say that I won't be surprised if the Republican didn't just shoot 
themselves in the foot and they are trying to cast blame on anybody but 
themselves in a close election year.
The whole thing is absolutely hilarious from the perspective of how much 
time and effort the R's are putting in finding who was that D operative that 
pulled off the stunt so effortlessly. They  are looking under every rock 
trying to find that mysterious and superhuman D operative, which of course 
leaves them less time to get their own act together and makes them look 
paranoid to say the least.  They've even gone so far as to --gasp-- blame 
Clinton for sexualizing Washington. Except they overlooked the dates on the 
earliest of Foley's communications with some sexual innuendo that predates 
Monicagate.

Krystof is right. The whole thing stinks. But  the R's will have to pick 
themselves up by the bootstraps and figure out a way to get out of this one 
on their own. As far as I'm concerned they can keep trying to blame 
everybody else, and blame D's too because that give the D's an aura of 
competence and stealth that worked beautifully. Maybe that is part of the 
strategy, if people think that democrats can pull off a perfect sting 
operation, even though it gives them more credit than they are due, it is at 
least less damaging than the ineptitude that is the due to the republicans.

Katie



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Meredith Bliss" <mbliss at agora.rdrop.com>
To: "Forest Grove local interests list" <grovenet at rdrop.com>
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 9:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] bad politics


> On Thursday 05 October 2006 14:36, Krystof Zmudzinski wrote:
>
>>   I'm confused.  You seemed to be defending Gerry Studds who did have sex
>> with a minor and took a minor not only across state lines but to a
>> different country.  So sex with a minor is OK but not IMs.  And Studds
>> stayed.  Foley is gone.  What else should Republicans do?
>
> Boy, talk about the straw man argument! As far as I can tell, no one ever
> mentioned Gerry Studds. I had to do a Google search to figure out that you
> were talking about a representative who was censured in 1983 for "a 1973
> relationship with a 17-year-old male congressional page who was of the age 
> of
> legal consent, according to state law at the time." And he stayed because 
> he
> was re-elected several times after that. Foley immediately resigned after
> learning that his true tastes would be made public, that's quite a bit
> different.
>
>>   If there was a crime and if there is a cover-up (which in itself may 
>> not
>> be criminal) that's one thing.
>
> And as in the "Plame affair," just because prosecutors decided that they 
> could
> not win a conviction doesn't mean either that a crime was not committed or
> that voters have no right to expect accountability.
>
>>   Right now, this whole thing stinks and I wouldn't be surprised if there
>> were indeed some Democratic party operatives involved but I'm not about 
>> to
>> hurl accusations
>
> That would be a first (but I think you just did anyway)!
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Just happy to be here, but speaking
> only for myself!
> Meredith Bliss --- www.rdrop.com/~mbliss
> ----------------------------------------
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