The sight of this story at CNN almost caused me to spew homemade potage Parmentier all over my computer screen:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Faced with fending off the backlash from the Mark Foley scandal, House Republicans took the offensive Friday, asking Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to testify about whether they engaged in partisan trickery by releasing Foley's messages weeks before the midterm elections.Top GOP leaders -- including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, and Majority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio -- have accused the Democrats of knowing about Foley's correspondences with teen pages, and waiting to release them until it was politically advantageous.
Are you fucking kidding me? That's how they're planning to "get by" the Foleygate scandals, by blaming them--as usual--on the Democrats?
Color me (a) unsurprised, and (b) highly skeptical that the ploy will work. For the last week, the words, "Foley," "Republican," and "sex scandal" have been pretty much indissolubly linked together in news reports, blog posts, and casual conversations. That's the kind of association you don't wash away by asserting it isn't there and pointing toward a convenient scapegoat waiting in the wings.
Moreover, it was reported at least two days ago that a Republican staffer gave the Foley e-mails to the source who gave them to the news media. The Democrats--like most Republicans--found out about Foley's conduct when it was first broadcast on the national news last week.
Why? Because that's how J. Dennis "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Hastert and the rest of the Rubber-Stamp Republican leadership wanted it. They didn't want to do anything to jeopardize a safe seat in Florida, and they certainly didn't want to do anything that might give voters even more reasons to vote for the Democrats or at least to stay home on Election Day.
Peddle your pabulum elsewhere, boys. We're not buying it.
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