I’ve felt all week like the left must have felt when it was reported that Tom Eagleton had undergone shock therapy: pouf! They knew they were toast.
With the Foley scandal, we lose much hope of holding onto representatives who believe that the only exit strategy for Iraq is victory. At least, Ann Coulter wittily puts it in perspective. Ann says that the Democrats, outraged about Foley, have at long last found a moral compass:
“When the House censured Studds for his sex romp with a male page, Studds — not one to be shy about presenting his backside to a large group of men — defiantly turned his back on the House during the vote. He ran for re-election and was happily returned to office SIX more times by liberal Democratic voters in his Martha’s Vineyard district. (They really liked his campaign slogan: ‘It’s the outfit, stupid.’)
“Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy referred to Studds’ affair with a teenage page as ‘a brief consenting homosexual relationship’ and denounced Studds’ detractors for engaging in a ‘witch hunt” against ‘gays:’ New England witch trials belong to the past, or so it is thought. This summer on Cape Cod, the reputation of Rep Gerry Studds was burned at the stake by a large number of his constituents determined to torch the congressman for his private life.’
“Meanwhile, Foley is hiding in a hole someplace.
“No one demanded to know why the Democrat Speaker of the House, Thomas
“Tip” O’Neill, took one full decade to figure out that Studds was propositioning male pages.
“But now, the same Democrats who are incensed that Bush’s National Security Agency was listening in on al-Qaida phone calls are incensed that Republicans were not reading a gay congressman’s instant messages. …”