Nah, KR, who has a refined sense of how to pander to the lowest common denominator, would ever make an error that stupid. Unless he’s actually as incompetent as the rest of ‘em…

‘given that Obama, Hillary, etc., and virtually all Democratic officed holders are self-interested careerists’…….

Sorry, ‘the talking dog’ [#33], but your making sweeping generalizations like the above turns me off to reading whatever your point is supposed to be in your whole comment.

I do sense a possible killing blow: if someone like Obama (using the occasion to “defend the honor of his fellow Illinioisan Dennis Hastert”) or Hillary (using the occasion to “defend the honor of her fellow New Yorker Tom Reynolds”) gave a speech right now and pointed out how prurient, juvenile and really trivial this Foley nonsense is, when what matters is that the Senate Majority Leader just told us that we have lost the war on terror and must invite the Taliban into the Afghan government because Bush and the Republicans’ priorities to fight in Iraq were incompetent anad duplicitous, AND the Secretary of State lied through her teeth about not being warned (along with the President) about the pre-9-11 threat, and what matters is not the inability of the Republicans to protect our children from… themselves… but to protect all of us from terrorism, and that its only sheer luck that we haven’t been attacked again, etc…. I think we’d get somewhere. I think the public has finally had it with the bulls*** from Bush, et al.

Of course given that Obama, Hillary, etc., and virtually all Democratic office holders are self-interested careerists, with no particular interest in the advancement of the party (let alone the advancement of its supposed policies) beyond themselves, I wouldn’t worry about this happening too much.

I agree wholeheartedly. The less visible we are in this, the more the focus rests on the Republicans–and they’re making themselves look really, really bad.

They have also been desperately trying to spin this as some kind of Democratic dirty trick (”the Democrats leaked it…oh wait, it was a Republican…look! George Soros!”), and by keeping a low profile (on Foleygate–not on the more substantive issues, like Iraq and national security in general) we make that all the more difficult and desperate.

And the dems aren’t standing back and saying nothing. Patty Wetterling has an ad up now (her son was kidnapped in ‘89 and never found). My own loathsome congresscritter, Heather Wilson, is being deluged with questions, since she was on the page board until a couple of years ago (oh, she’s squirming and using the Seargant Shultz defense, it’s so much fun to watch). The democratic leadership is calling for resignations, investigations, and if necessary, arrests.

My big fear is that Operation Nuke Iran is still on track, and they’ll think it’ll be just the thing to turn the news cycle around. They’re that delusional.

It is true that for those of us who care about what is really going on in Iraq, and with Bush’s foreign policy past present and future, for those of us who are informed on the issue and for those of us who actually UNDERSTAND the issue (and, it goes without saying, for those of use who are not my-party-right-or-wrong-republicans), for all of US, things have been happening and being revealed in the past weeks that are extremely damning; they show conclusively, once and for all, just how bad bush&crew are for the country.

The majority of the country neither understands nor cares to understand. Foreign policy is complicated, and few have the time, energy, or experience/knowledge to really judge, SO they just believe whatever their chosen party tells them to believe.

A gay pedophilia congressional sex scandal/coverup tho? EVERYBODY understands THAT!!! No need to defer to the Party on THIS issue, everybody in the country has watched enough jerry springer (the TV show, not the radio show) to know EXACTLY what’s going on here…

So, with bad info coming in from Iraq, for example, it’s relatively easy for repub leadership to spin it completely out of existence. This will be impossible to spin.

Recall: the repubs spent all 8 years of the clinton presidency trying to find a scandal that would actually stick, that enough people would get upset over that they would be able to run with it … complicated financial deals with Whitewater, fer example, that nobody really gave a damn about … it wasn’t until they finally reduced it down to “clinton got a BLOW JOB from an INTERN” that they found their silver bullet…

-me

I’m not convinced it’s the wrong strategy. Seems to me standing back and letting congressional Republicans tear each other apart in public is working pretty well at the moment.

IMO one of the reasons President Clinton remained popular in 1997-1999 in spite of the personal scandals is that the GOP was just a little too eager to hang him. They overplayed their hand, again and again, and the general public was more wearied by the foaming-at-the-mouth Ken Starr brigade than by Clinton’s behavior.

Hannity and Limbaugh fans are going to stick with the Right no matter what the Dems do. It’s what everyone else thinks that matters. It might be that “promoting an increase in the minimum wage and port security” while the GOP flops around in damage control mode makes the Dems look serious and adult and the GOP look like a bunch of clowns.

However, the GOP always looks like a bunch of clowns to me, so I may be mistaken.

So. Of course Denny is gonna go on Limbaugh and Hannity (oh yes, he was on Hannity later in the day giving the same talking points) to shore up the Believers first. That done, he and they can go on to blame the Dems for anything and everything, their Amen Chorus will blissfully chant along, and voila! Victory on the morrow.

It’s worked many times in the past. The fact that Denny is intransigent and disingenuous actually works to his benefit and the potential benefit of Rs in general, because it looks tough and uncompromising in the face of Dems’ Dirty Tricks (the preferred — indeed, almost universal — right wing conspiracy theory about the Foley Mess). It doesn’t matter if Denny is wrong, corrupt, evil, what have you. The fact that he is standing up to the Dems’ is all it takes for the Believers to fall in line.

What? You say Dems had nothing to do with it? That’s beside the point. Truth doesn’t matter. All that matters is winning, and winning requires that the Dems be blamed.

I’m not convinced that standing back and watching Rs savage one another (which is what Harry Reid said on the Stephanie Miller Show the Dems’ strategery was) while promoting an increase in the minimum wage and port security is a winner though.

Time will tell.

Um, no, let’s not. That’s stupid.