Kiss my left behind, Denny

So what's wrong with this headline, taken from yesterday's Chicago Tribune?

Hastert takes responsibility, but won't step down

Now that I think about it, it might be easier to list the things that are right with that headline. Here they are:

To read what's wrong with it, follow me below the fold.

We can start with the fact that for J. Dennis "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Hastert to take responsibility for Foleygate practically a week after the fertilizer first hit the ventilator does nothing. When the horse has already been stolen, slaughtered, butchered, and air-freighted back to Europe as cutlets, it's a little late to be worrying about putting a better lock on the barn door.

Where were you, Denny, when one of your colleagues was hitting on teen-aged boys practically from the moment he was sworn in as a Republican member of Congress, 11 years ago? Where were you three years ago, two years ago, last year, or even six months ago? I'll tell you where you were: making your usual back-room deals to make sure your party had political cover so you could keep your fat ass in the speaker's chair, that's where you were.

Same thing with deciding that now is maybe a good time to look into the way the page program is administered. Seems to me the Democrats did a fine job of putting safeguards into place a quarter-century ago--the last time we had a member of Congress (two members of Congress, if you want to get technical about it) messing around with one of the pages. Trouble is, you were so busy taking avoiding responsibility, you forgot to abide by those safeguards. Or, more likely, you deliberately ignored them. Because if you hadn't, word might have gotten out that Mark Foley was sexually harassing an underaged page in your guardianship, and that could have cost you at least one allegedly safe "Republican" seat.

So spare me your sanctimonious bullshit about taking responsibility. You don't know the meaning of that word, Denny, except as it applies to your fatcat corporte masters and anybody you think might be useful to help you keep a Republican majority in Congress so you can (a) stay in (or at least close to) power, and (b) avoid having to face a crop of very angry Democrats who not only have axes to grind and bones to pick with you after being completely shut out of the legislative process these past six years, but also now have subpoena power and fully intend to exercise it on your bloated behind.

Which brings me to my next point. If you're going to take responsibility, you have to fucking step down. There's no other option available to you. Because you're "on the hot seat" and you are a detriment to your party. And therefore, in your own words from yesterday, you ought to go.

Not that I particularly mind your decision to stay on, of course. figured you would anyway, having no shame, no conscience, no sense of ethics, and not even half an ounce of integrity amid all that lard. Your staying on as speaker is the one silver lining, at least politically speaking, in this whole sordid affair. Not for the Republican Party, mind you. But it's solid gold for the Democrats. Because as long as you're up there, front-and-center, we've got a great hulking behemoth of a target to shoot at. Every time you go to campaign for one of your fellow Rubber-Stamp Republicans, every time you try to score a rhetorical point against your opponent, people are going to be firing questions at you about Foleygate, or listening to your answers through the lens of that mess. As long as you're in Washington, Foleygate is in the news. And that's got to be good news for the Democrats' chances in November, despite what Nice Polite Republicans had to say yesterday morning.

If the buck indeed stops with you, Denny, then you should be stepping down. Right now. And not just, as speaker, as John Laesch, your Democratic opponent (and eventual successor in Congress) has called for. No, you should quit the House of Representatives altogether.

Why? Because that's what you'd do if you were in any sense an honorable man, and you'd just taken responsibility for a sordid scandal on this gargantuan scale. And you'd be pressuring your buddies John Shimkus, John Boehner, and Tom Reynolds to say sayonara to politics, too.

Until you've got the guts to do that, Denny, you can just kiss my left behind. And then only if I get to have a full-body, haz-mat-grade decontamination afterward.

Comments

[Incertus]

Being a Republican means all you have to do is say you're sorry. You don't have to mean it or do anything to make amends. Just saying it is enough.