a bi-partisan problem. That's the point Rosa Brooks made in her latest column:
Idiocy and greed aren't just for Republicans. For every Larry Craig,
there's an Eliot Spitzer; for every Ted Stevens, there's a Rod Blagojevich.
So after an Democratic scandal she points out that corruption knows no party identity.
True enough. Both Republicans and Democrats have absolute scum in their party.
However, Brooks wasn't feeling so bi-partisan when a Republican Congressman needed
to be ousted:
THE FAMOUSLY effective GOP messaging machine has broken down.
On Wednesday, just as President Bush was insisting that Americans must
"vote Republican for the safety of the United States," Republican Rep. Ray
LaHood of Illinois was telling CNN that Congress can't even ensure the safety
of the young pages under its care. "Let's suspend [the page program], send
the pages home," LaHood told CNN's Miles O'Brien. "To send 15- and
16-year-old boys and girls to Washington, D.C. … we should not subject
[them] to this kind of activity and this kind of vulnerability." In response,
O'Brien commented: "Well, that's kind of a sorry state of affairs. In essence,
what you're saying is that members of Congress can't be trusted to be
around young people."
LaHood's answer was blunt: "Well, that's pretty obvious."
Yup, that's where we're at, my fellow citizens. It's a little hard to trust the
Republican-led Congress to keep the whole United States safe when you
can't even trust them not to molest your children.
The Foley scandal makes for salacious reading, and it's always satisfying
to see hypocrisy exposed for what it is. But neither the Foley page scandal
nor the Republican leadership's energetic efforts to shove it under the carpet
should come as a surprise. Though only the Foley scandal has generated
substantial media coverage, the Republican-led Congress has a long record
of child endangerment.
Brooks is arguing that the Foley scandal is evidence of the whole Republican party
being supportive of child endangerment.
I got the message. The message is: When a Democrat gets in trouble it's evidence
that corruption knows no party boundaries. When a Republican gets in deep poo, it's
emblematic of the whole party being dangerous.
