That’s true, that’s true. I suspect, though, that the media, having reinserted their backbone, won’t settle for “I cannot answer.” They’ll say, “Fine. We’ve got other sources.”
And that “can’t answer” thing cuts both ways. It means the guilty can’t admit to their sins–but it also means the guilty can’t deny even bigger sins.
If Hastert says, “I can’t answer whether I found out about this email in 2006, and I can’t answer about whether I found out about this email in 2005, but I assure you that these latest reports, that I found out about them in 2003, are false!”, well, we’ll know his guilt as sure as we know when the Prez last snorted coke.
Of course, it’s also possible that Republicans are sounding a desperate note to try to get everybody to work hard and to get voters energized, to whatever degree that’s still possible. Squink’s data is more objective, although there’s still a month to go and we don’t know how many people might change their votes or (perhaps more likely) stay home.
Perhaps it takes a twisted kind of amorality – that the Dems don’t posses – to see a newborn scandal and immediately ponder, “What’s the best way to exploit this?”
And that, I think, is the Republican party’s greatest strength. No need to do anything more than pay lip service to the “values” that you claim to have, as long as you can make the other side look bad.
You need to differentiate the e-mails from the IMs. The question is, if this was a prank, did Foley still think he wa talking to an underage page. If so, then his actions are still reprehensible.
A very Rove-like strategy – whatever you’re doing, be quick to accuse the other side of doing it first. That way, they seem to be the ones re-acting when they bring the charge against you.
And guess what – those negative reports turned out to be accurate.
[qutoe=cervaise]NPR story this morning: not so much
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There’s a large fraction of diehard party loyalists on either side, who will simply never vote across the aisle. But they’re not who decides elections. The moderate, independent, less-involved, cynical, just-short-of-apathetic voters who outnumber the stated members of either party decide elections. The question about their decisions isn’t “if” but “how much”.
Well, I’ve already received a thorough dressing-down for not being able to prove this all wasn’t common knowledge among everyone in Congress with ears that work. Have to tread lightly here now.
I did discover one Democrat who knew, but that’s Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. That doesn’t help my argument much though. She may be a Democrat, but CREW is also the org which received copies of the emails and immediately sent them to the FBI and then later demanded to know why the FBI didn’t do anything. So I can’t claim “the Dems knew too but did nothing.”
I’ll keep looking out for evidence the Dems knew but sat on their hands, but at this point I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of me finding one.
If you read that “prank” story, it doesn’t really amount to anything more than one of the former pages trying to deny that he’s really gay. It’s not clear which communications this particular person is associated with but the whole “It was just a joke, I’m not really gay” stuff sounds like it was probably the kid that Foley had cybersex with. That kid is now (according to Drudge) a conservative Republican with political aspirations who’s afraid his name is going to come out so he’s preemptively putting out his “I was just kidding, I’m not really a homo” defense just in case.
The whole story is completely self-serving on the part of the former page and really does Foley no favors at all.
Also notice how carefully Drudges parses his description of ABC’s source as being “friendly to the Democrats” but doesn’t really say he’s a Democrat. That’s because it was a Republican, but that Drudge is tautologically labelling any source that hurts the Pubs as being “friendly to Dems.” Man, that guy is a weasel.
Of couse, that’s assuming his story even has any truth to it at all. He could be making it up out of his ass like he did with that Kerry-intern story.
Another one that I’ve seen that’s harder to measure is that, for the past week and a half, Foleygate has completely taken the megaphone out of Bush’s hands. He can say whatever he wants, but nobody’s paying attention. His vaunted ability to control the debate has, for the time being, gone right down the toilet.
Politically, this is shaping up like another Katrina - only this time, thankfully, nobody had to die.
I hope we never find out Foley managed to “score” with some 16 year old who did it because he felt pressure.
(If a sixteen year old is the legal age to consent and does it of his own free will…that is one thing. But if that same kid felt sexually harrassed because Foley was a member of Congress, that not too many steps from rape in my book).
I doubt it will play out that way in the current environment. Recent polls show the Democrats leading the Republicans on national security. In that case the recent news from North Korea should push the Republicans even lower.