Unlike the Democratic Party leadership, I am not surprised to discover that congresspersons sometimes run after young men. For some reason, however, I believe it’s my duty to comment on a few things that the Great Foley Sex Scandal seems to have revealed about our two major parties.
First, the Republican Party, long denounced by Democrats as antigay, antisex, etc., etc., is now being denounced by Democrats as culpably lax in sexual morality.
Second, it’s clear that the Republican leadership, whether “lax” or not, was in no hurry to crucify Congressman Foley when it learned that he was “over-friendly” to congressional pages. In fact, Republican leaders appear to have done exactly what Democratic leaders would have done, and doubtless have done, when confronted with similar evidence. They told Foley to mind his manners, not make a fool of himself, and refrain from disgracing his office. Then they forgot about this thousandth piece of evidence that congressmen are bigger on ego than on ethics. They had no interest whatever in using the incident to commence a witch-hunt or purge, or even in convincing morons like Foley that it would be good for their health to stand down from the next election.
Third, it’s clear that the Democrats, in their relentless, infuriated demands that the Speaker of the House resign for his “laxity” in the Foley affair, are doing more or less what Senator McCarthy tried to do to the old Democratic leadership. Because communists had worked in the Democratic administration, and the Dems hadn’t succeeded in rooting them all out (though they had tried a lot harder than anybody tried with Foley, or any other gay Republican honcho who comes to mind), McCarthy thought that the Democrats themselves must be rooted out. You see the analogy with the current Democratic campaign for morality in public office. And the spirit is very similar. Every day, Democratic activists use the internet to unmask Republican leaders, activists, and media personalities as (allegedly) homosexual; and the attitude is precisely what one associates with a McCarthyite or Stalinist smear campaign.
Fourth, the Democrats, who are silly enough to believe their own propaganda about the Republicans’ having won the last election by opposing gay marriage, thus attracting enough church voters to swing the electoral balance, are now trying to perform the stunt themselves. Their indignation about Foley is aimed at one audience, and one audience only: evangelical voters, whom they hope to keep away from the polls by advertising the idea that the Republican Party is an outpost of Sodom.
Well, of course it is, just as the Democratic Party is; and that’s why I expect few voters to be swayed by the Democrats’ calls for resignations, criminal investigations, and a general resurrection of the Bloody Assizes. If the Republicans go down in the fall election, as may well happen, it won’t be because of this, no matter what the pundits say.
There’s a more interesting issue. The public perception of the two parties, assiduously inculcated by the Democratic leadership, is: Republicans = pointy-hatted witch-hunters; Democrats = kindly friends of all U diversity.” I wonder. Will the facts change this perception?
