I hope everyone realizes that the GOP has been sitting on this until it was to their advantage to trot it out as a misdirection from the miserable failure of our Global War on Terror in Iraq

That was my first thoughts. A sacrifice bunt. The more people that learn how this misdirection scam works the better.

You gotta love the way Gingrich's mind works.  Said the GOP had a good enough excuse not to investigate a predatory pedophile, because they were afraid they'd be accused of gay bashing. 

That's right.  The GOP is all about acting in a way that won't upset liberals!

Second thought is to observe how the GOP typically deals with these type of problems.  Foley checks himself into alcohol rehab.  Suddenly and magically, he's not the perp; he's the victim!  Hell, he's probably not really gay!!  It's that horrible alcohol talking.  This could happen to anybody!

And by the way, liberals always protect perpetrators as victims; gotta stop that.  At least that's the strawman the GOP uses except when shit happens to them.

_________________________________

Never has the left been so right.

Awesome parody, my good man! I bow to the master!

tin-pot dictators with imaginary weapons of mass deception in their pants

And in one sentence takes a swipe at the tin-foil hatters AND Sandy Bergers pants! Genius, simply genius! Dude ... you rawk! =D

I dunno - I watched a fair amount of CNN coverage tonight and they don't seem willing to give the Rs a pass on the Foley stuff.

And I'm pretty sure I stole "JC on a pogo stick" from Randy.  I know I stole it somewhere.

Just heard Bob Woodward talk about the "Mission Accomplished" sign that W posed in front of on the aircraft carrier -- you know, the tailhook landing and the flightsuit strapped over his bulging crotch that Mann Coulter went so nutso over? The embarrassingly over-the-top boastthat BushCo said they didn't know nuttin' about and blamed on the military?

Woodruff says that "Mission Accomplished" was actually in W's speech, but got scrubbed. The banner, however, was already in place and couldn't be gotten rid of.

So they just said the Navy guys did it.

Evidently that was a big whopper. Think I'll get that book.

This stuff with that Foley guy, I hope everyone realizes that the GOP has been sitting on this until it was to their advantage to trot it out as a misdirection from the miserable failure of our Global War on Terror in Iraq

OK, I know you hate Bush. I know you hate the war. I know you hate Republicans of every stripe. But SURELY you can't seriously believe what you are saying here.

Do you honestly believe that the Republican Congress would rather have the national story be about the Republican leadership's being complicit with a child molester and sexual predator than to be about the war? The country is pretty divided about the war, and about what's to be done about it, but outside NAMBLA no one in America holds a brief for sexual predators. And its bad enough that the Republicans had elevated one to a position of prominence - now it turns out that they had reason to believe that he was a predator and they sat on their hands about it.

Look, I know that among the intellectualoids that hang out here the war is THE thing. But the people who will decide the next election are not intellectualoids - they are ordinary folks. A lot of them don't know WHAT to think about the war, if they think about it at all. But ALL of them have kids, had kids, or are related to people that have kids, and ALL of them can relate to a story about child sexual predators. Ordinary folks will react with FAR more vehemence with regard to a story like this than they ever will about stories about the Geneva convention, or even torture directed at people that a lot of voters probably believe have it coming to them anyway.

This scandal has far greater potential to lose congress for the R's than any story about the war, any Woodward book, or any dozen Michael Moore "documentaries." The guys who got elected to the positions they are in may not be brain sugeons and rocket scientists, but they understand how to get elected. And the truth is, a sex scandal is a far worse thing to happen to you in an election year than a bad book, and every one of these guys know it. To suggest that they themselves exposed it because they thought it would distract people from the GWOT is... well, kinda amazing.

I see the problem -- diverting attention from (even more) substantive scandals, crimes and deceptions, ie, ones victimizing more than a few unfortunate teenagers -- but I think there's a fairly straightforward way of "having your cake and eating it too" on this one: show what the Foley scandal has in common with any number of other criminal malfeasance by the Republican leadership.

I'd say it something like this:Whenever the GOP "leadership" (scare quotes essential) gets unwelcome news, their first, last, and only instinct is to hide it and hope it goes away -- no matter who else gets hurt:

Foley - check
recent NIE - check
9/11 - check
Katrina - check

...etcetera 

I think y'all are misunderestimating the impact of this thing (an yes, I too mourn the death of substance). It's an unmitigated disaster, flushing $$ millions in high-grade family values bullshitting branding down the toilet in a span of hours. The timing couldn't have been worse. Goopers couldn't get their story straight (no pun intended), as most were already spreading across the country for campaign season.

If the Dems had any kind of clue, they'd have pivoted from the Foley issue today and flank on national security. The Goopers are completely off their game.   

Watch this video of NRCC chair Tom Reynolds.  Surrounding himself with little kids was insane. He might as well have said, "Yes, I enjoy using children. The younger the better."