What War? We've Got 'Pagegate'
Sex scandal helps Dems give the right a great big wedgie.
Child-stalking congressman Foley
In one of those delightful turns that make politics so repellently fascinating, the pederastic fantasies of a drunken Florida conservative congressman seem likely to become a deciding issue in the upcoming American mid-term elections. Mark Foley's follies are more smoking than the average gun, so to speak.
With their puritan sensibilities, American voters are frequently more horrified by sexual improprieties than by war -- remember Bill Clinton's oral predilections leading to his near impeachment. Never mind that Congress just passed legislation abrogating 800 years of Anglo-American justice, ending habeas corpus for selected prisoners, who thus can rot forever in prisons where they can be subjected to torture. This law was passed just last week, but "Pagegate" seems to have driven that monstrously draconian piece of legislation out of public concern.
Lincoln did it
Of course the main Republican electoral strategy had been to fear-monger the "war on terror" into yet another victory. Although the American electorate disapproves of President Bush by two to one, and by the same margin fails to believe the war in Iraq is going well, their gut-level fears of going soft on terrorism were, the Republics believed, bound to drive them into the Republican camp once more. And the craven Democrats had to support a vigorous war on terror and to support American boys fighting in Iraq, lest they appear any less patriotic than the party in power. They therefore caved on the gulag bill just signed by the President, and in general looked like wimps ready for another political defeat.
Even last week's CIA report that concluded that the Iraq war has worsened, not lessened, the construction of the forces of Islamic terror failed to register fully with the voters. The Bush trump card was that in wartime all means are to be used to win the struggle, whether or not the various policy elements work together, or for that matter separately.
In a sense there is nothing new about Congress embracing the destruction of freedom during war. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, and somewhere between 7,000 and 11,000 northern men were thrown in jail on suspicion of treason and held without trial, sometimes for years. Democracies need not commit suicide during a civil war, Lincoln declared, and the Supreme Court did not overrule this presidential destruction of freedom until 1867, two years after the war was over and Lincoln assassinated. Such mass incarcerations were repeated in both world wars. After the conflicts were over, the policies were withdrawn.
Now, as George Orwell predicted in his book 1984, the United States is engaged in perpetual, if undeclared, war -- who can imagine the war on terror ever ending? And so permanent war means permanent abrogation of basic civil rights, and the imprisonment and horrific treatment of anyone the government deems a terrorist for as long as it takes. Perpetual war also means that the Republicans in power can fan up enormous public fear for as long and as hard as they need to be perpetually elected. And the Democrats have to show a genuinely frightened but also artificially whipped-up public that they would be just as tough, thus in effect endorsing the policy of the Republican president while arguing that somehow they can do it better.
Handed the wedge
Therefore Pagegate comes as a greatly ironic wedge issue. But this time, the wedge issue is dividing Republican voters, all those holy Christians horrified at sexual misconduct, most especially homosexuality.
Last time it was gay marriage, and the time before that, flag burning -- both wedge issues of Republican creation that solidified their fear-driven base.
This time the Democrats have been handed the wedge, and they will drive it in with hope and with joy and with every bit as much canting hypocrisy as the Republicans used on Clinton and on gay marriages.
Smelling a coverup, the Democrats are already demanding to know when House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert knew that Mark Foley was writing to the pages. On the other side of the aisle, already the house majority leader, Republican John A. Bohner of Ohio is saying that the buck stops with Hastert -- surely a preparation for possibly dumping the Speaker, even as President Bush defends him. And Hastert is waffling amid a set of prevarications he cannot escape. This scandal ought to run up to Election Day, and whether Hastert stays or quits, the Republicans will look terrible in Kansas, and many of those morally righteous Republican voters might well sit out the election.
Would that American politics could deal honestly and calmly with the big issues of the day: war and peace, security, poverty and social justice. Perhaps the wedge issue of the abuse of children, a terrible wrong in itself, will work this time against the self-reputed Party of God, and hoist them on their own petard, even while Iraq continues to burn.
And so American politics tumble toward November in a darkly comic turn. Soul-stirring, isn't it!
Historian Michael Fellman is the author of several books on the Civil War, including The Making of Robert E. Lee. He is also director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Simon Fraser University. He writes an occasional column on U.S. politics for The Tyee.
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verso
5 years ago
Comments on "What War? We've Got 'Pagegate'"
When the religious right goes wrong... Flannery O'Connor couldn't have written a more sordid tale.
Pathetic but true. This is a gift for the Democrats, but I wouldn't count Republicans out just yet... that Machiavellian Rove says he has a "surprise" coming in October and they're still a few terrorist alerts away from November. That said, it's fun watching those righteous Republicans self-destruct.
And talk about conspiracy theorists, some right wing blogs in the US are already trying to pin this on Carver.
Frank
5 years ago
I thought they'd be trying to blame it on those cute outfits the pages wear. Okay, maybe that's just Limbaugh.
Rove's gona need a whole new whack of fart jokes to pull the GOP chestnuts out of all the fires they're in.
Maybe he'll declare the French are right and bin Laden is dead. Or maybe Bush will invade a Latin American country because Chavez likes the Fair Trade in coffee scheme.
Should be a fun month coming up.
verso
5 years ago
ooops Carver = Carville, as in James, in the post above
Nana
5 years ago
It will all be all right since O'Reilly label Foley a Democrat 3x on his show.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/October2006/041006Foley.htm
Coyote
5 years ago
They are a slip-slidy, oily bunch. :-)
jesterjogger
5 years ago
Considering that they're a bunch of child-molesting, murdering, white-collar criminals led by a mad-man with delusions of grandeur its easy to see why harper and his coalition of right-wing cronies loive the republican party and bush so much.
I mean what's NOT to love?
Nana
5 years ago
Buggergate
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m27170
DPL
5 years ago
american politics is weird. For weeks we heard about how Bush neds more tools to beat the prisioners, more money etc etc. A lot of politicians said no way. so the get to vote after all the posturing. More money and more ways to hurt prisioners. One of their right wiongers has a habit of appraoching kids under his control. Gosh why didn't we know. well they did know, did they do anyhting? Of course not , it might affect the mid terms. To hell with justice
Nana
5 years ago
Pagegate is the tip of a really nasty iceberg which was uncovered by a Nebraska Republican state senator named John DeCamp in the late 80's. A prominent Black Republican named Larry King prostituted boys from Boystown in Nebraska to Washington D.C. for sadistic pedophilic orgies.
The Franklin Coverup Scandal
The Child sex ring that reached Bush/Reagan Whitehouse
http://www.thelawparty.com/FranklinCoverup/franklin.htm
contains a link to a film made for the Discovery Channel which was surpressed called "Conspiracy of Silence"
IAMC
5 years ago
jesterjogger;
you say above very clearly, that conservatives are a bunch of child molesting republican loving , war mongers.
To call somebody a child molester is desperate, and weak, illogical , stupid,
Jester ( jogger ) please spare us from your twisted logic. You are a very strange poster as far as I'm concerned.
Bobb999
5 years ago
Thanks to the tsunami of scandals whacking them,the GOP is toast in Nov. 7 elections.
So, it won't be quite enough to have their Wall Street friends trying to desperately manipulate markets up (the DOW just hit a new high, while most of the technical analysts I read call it a fake out), and manipulating gasoline prices down (Goldman Sachs pulled this one off): http://financialsense.com/Market/kirby/2006/0925.html
http://financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2006/1004b.html
They don't want irate motorists driving to the polls, or angry investors watching their portfolios go up in smoke, and fearing the economy's heading for recession, now do they?
Watch for US markets to tank after November 7.
Thanks to Mr. Foley and GOP House leaders, Bob Woodwards new book, the NIE
consensus report saying the Iraq war has worsened terrorism, opinion polls of Iraqis showing widespread anti-Americanism, opinion polls of Americans showing anti-Republicanism -
they're toast! Yippeeiokayay.
Watch for two years of House investigations and impeachments of some of the Bush gang. It's going to become very unpleasant for those bastards.
Gray
5 years ago
I share this enthusiasm for the comprehensive defeat of the GOP in the midterm elections but the not optimism. Yet.
At first glance it seems like a best case scenario, Americans have realized what a dreadful president Bush is and there is a gay sex scandal engulfing the GOP house leadership. Still Rove is a sharp operator and US citizens have a bone deep distrust of Democrats on security issues. Plus the Democrats have a flair for implosion.
Here's hoping.
jesterjogger
5 years ago
I actually said that republicans are child molesting, white-collar criminal, murderers.
(If many know that child-exploitation is taking place and yet nothing is done to stop it then in my opinion they are all guilty.
This also applies for the murder of innocent people.)
Did you see Bill Moyers documentary last night on the k-street gang and the astonishing corruption that has typified the republican party.
Steven "banachek" harper actually appears in this documentary!!!!!!
What a ringing endorsement.
Nana
5 years ago
Here comes the cover-up. Speaker Hastert has appointed Louis Freeh, ex-FBI head to investigate. Mike rivero points out that
It was interesting that both of Bill Moyers' guests last night thought it would take a very long time to clean up the generalized corruption in D.C..
thomas49
5 years ago
I AM Clueless,you got me on a giggle that is going to last a few days with that comment.
[B]If that ain't the pot calling the kettle black,i don't know what is.
Nana
5 years ago
Conversations between Jeff Rense and Alex Jones feel that Pagegate is really to remind each Congressman and Senator how vulnerable each is to blackmail and channel off whatever outrage might have been built up by the revocation of Magna Carta. http://www.rense.com/general73/uod.htm
What is happening across the border can't help but have a horrendous outcome here too.
Working Man
5 years ago
How ironic; for all the lying, stealing, cheating and murdering the Bush administration has been doing since 2001, it is interesting that a sex scandal will bring them down.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Don't worry, the Bushies will try to turn this into something positive - likely another negative push agains gay people.
Watch for it. It'll be used as a way to reconnect with the fundamentalist base.
lark2
5 years ago
If only Carl Jung were still here to help us with this one. Pedophiles look in mirrors and see those odious pedophiles and so make laws to punish pedophiles. Warmongers see pedophiles and think of ways to blackmail so that support for weird wars can be garnered. Denial in the face of the real becomes more fodder for political struggles. Whoa- can we have psycho-cultural analysis here?!