Foley of it

I can't go too far into the guilt of the Foley matter as I won't read the IM's in question (I won't even link to them. If you want to read them, you can find them). All I've seen are the heavily edited excerpts that you can't avoid on TV and newspapers/websites (from that alone though, if he sent them to my son, or daughter, he would hurt real bad).

Instead I want to talk around it, but first I have to wonder why this simple solution didn't occur to anyone.

Since House Leadership knew about Foley for at least 2 years then was an easy solution that would have avoided a) An appearance of Homophobia (by the by, I think this is complete crap - the worst kind of excuse one could imagine. I'm sorry, but anyone who's buying this line of reasoning is an idiot, seriously, an idiot. I won't drone on here because I can't imagine anyone's taking the bait, but if you want to discuss it tell me in the comments section and I'll be happy to go into it). b) Kept the seat. Which seems like the real goal. c) Got ahead of the inevitable release of the the seedy information. d)Wrapped the whole mess up. All anyone had to do was simply go to Foley two years ago and tell him, "Look, this is bad. Maybe not jail bad, but bad none the less. We're not going public with it because we don't know all the details. BUT, you're not running again for Congress. This is your last term. Thank you."

He would have thanked Hastert, and that would have been that. It's a heavily GOP Gerrymandered district, so the seat was safe with a new candidate. Plus, this news most probably would not have broke, and if it did, so what? This election is about the new guy. If the news did get out, leadership could have said, "We had information, not as explicate as this, but troubling enough that we dealt with it." They may have taken some heat, but nothing like the burn they're getting now. "Ease outs" are historically the way these things are handled by insiders. Right or wrong, innocent or guilty, it avoids the mess, everyone saves face, and all parties have the chance to prosper - Foley could have raked it in as a former, and popular, congressman as a lobbiest, boardmember, etc. Why Hastert didn't do this is anyone's guess. What's even worse is that NRCC Chairman Rep. Tom Reynolds conviced him to run again when Foley was thinking about calling it a career. It's simply mindblowing. GOP leadership urged a possible pedophile to run for re-election. Wow, what a wrong turn. If that doesn't get you fired, nothing will.

I just can't get past that, but because I'm a pro (if one can be a pro-blogger) so here we go.

One, it show's messed up our politicians are. To me, this is pretty cut and dry. He's a sicko. Not only were his antics covered up, he was allowed to continue as Co Chair, Missing and Exploited Childrens Caucus (quick aside, here's his bio at Project Vote smart. Not for nothing, maybe the problem with Congress is too many Caucuses. If I read these on the Onion, I would swear they were fake.). Leadership knew and did nothing, putting more underage pages at risk. The clear answer is a mass cleansing of all involved. It doesn't matter if you're a Dem or a GOPer (or of course, a Libertarian), that's the solution. Yet, the GOP is trying desperately to make this a political issue by blaming the Dems, bringing up past Dem issues, and trying to create the impression that this was all orchestrated by the Dems. My favorites are Newt Gingrich, who I was starting to warm to, saying that Dem sex scandals are worse. Ummm, so what does that have to do with Foley and the cover-up? Can you imagine if Wal-Mart had a similar thing happen to it and said, "Oh yeah, well things are worse at Target!" Would that fly with anyone? Would anyone feel better about shopping at Wal-Mart knowing that? Look, I don't want to get too far off message here but maybe the GOP's problem is that it's completely lost its moral footing. It's all relative now. "Our version of torture is ok because Saddam's was worse." "Our sex scandals are ok because the Dem's are worse." There's no set standard upon which they hold themselves. As long as they perceive their transgressions to be less than the bottom example, it's ok. How do you support that? Plus, unless I missed something, chronic gay pedophelia sets a new low. I honestly don't recall worse than that from the Dems (Stalin you can correct me if I'm wrong on that).

Second, this notion that ABC released it to hurt the GOP. Apparantly Fox had the info as did at least the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald (here's the St. Pete Times response) and they knew for about a year. I don't have it in me to go do the research, but I've read the Times for years, and I occasionaly watch Fox, generally they have no problem reporting this kind of stuff. But memory is selective so I'm not calling them hypocritical. My piont with this section is that between them getting it, and the admitted Foley concerns by those around and above him, it was going to come out. The problem with avoiding a problem rather than confronting it is that you lose all ability to control timing. Had this come out a year ago, when it was essentially "out," and dealt with, then it would not be happening now. No one sat on this, except possibly Fox, the Times and the Herald, and released it to hurt the GOP right before the elections. The fact that the story was out a year ago kills that theory.

Third, as far as "media bias" goes, both Fox (on O'Reilly - seriously Stalin can we both at least agree that he's a hack, please. Just meet me halfway on this one point) and the AP labled Foley as "D-FL" not once, but several times. A mistake? Maybe. But it has to hurt the "liberal biased media" theory, or open Fox and AP up to "conservative manipulation" conspiracy theories.

And to come full circle, Snow's a real jackass. Calling Foley's IM's "naughty e-mails" is a pathetic, partisan attempt to cover the GOP. My bet is that if they were sent to Snow's underage child, he'd view them as slightly more than "naughty." Granted, he later back-tracked, but only after getting hammered by anyone and everyone who heard his initial comments.

That's about all I can take for now. The lesson, as always, is don't cover, don't hide, just deal. If the GOP just did that, they wouldn't be in this storm right now.