A Republican outlines reasons why it's time to switch sides

[CatWoman]

I've had it. The Republican leadership in the House, beginning with Speaker Dennis Hastert, has got to go. As in now. I'm thinking we need to plow through four or five people right below Hastert, too. If the Republican members of the House had any guts, they'd have ousted these people last week. If the Republican leadership had any shame, they would have quit last week.

The Hastert storyline is one in which there's no percentage. The most degenerate gambler wouldn't place a bet on Hastert and the rest surviving. The Hastert line is this: I take responsibility, but I've done nothing wrong. This is no worse than Democratic sex scandals. We, personally, have done nothing wrong.

Well, to start with, you did nothing about Foley. Do we need to know more? The Republican sex scandals are suddenly pure and virginal? Foley, to the pier. Hastert, to the bench.

Some of you then trot out, Oh, sure, it's a sex scandal that gets you upset. Everything else was A-OK. No, it's not just that we understand this sex scandal, though it is awfully easy to understand. Pretty much everyone knows, on a visceral level, that what has gone on with Foley is deeply wrong.

The reason Republicans are bent out of shape is that this Foley scandal is the proverbial last straw. We've had it. The out-of-control spending. The earmarks. The graft with the lobbyists. The arrogance. The abrogation of principles that Goldwater, Reagan and others worked decades to spread.

The Republicans will lose the House in November. Absent big changes, I have to say they deserve to. I will help them lose it, because in my own congressional district, Pennsylvania's 10th, I'm voting for Democrat Chris Carney. As the campaign literature for Carney slyly notes, he's been married for 18 years to his college sweetheart.

Why might he note that? Because his opponent, and the incumbent, Republican Don Sherwood, engaged in a five-year affair in Washington with a mistress some three decades his junior.

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/...

[ourbluenation]

1. kickin this one up....

it's a goodie...

[CatWoman]

2. I found it at Mother Jones

thanks for the kick

[ourbluenation]

3. you're (kick) welcome

[Jade Fox]

4. Wow....

and he managed NOT to say anything about Clinton, even when describing Washington as awash in corruption and sex.

[SeattleGirl]

9. I noticed that too. Finally, a self-identified Republican who

says, ENOUGH!

[elocs]

11. Amazingly enough there Republicans who are good people.

They are as sincere in their beliefs as we are and they are as quick to defend their people, sometimes beyond reason, as we are. They are as quick to overlook the faults and inconsistencies of their own people as we are of ours. Ultimately, we are exactly the same, only totally different. Oh, there are Republicans who are not good people, who are liars, thief, jerks and perverts, but they hardly have the monopoly on those. Unfortunately we have become so polarized as a nation that neither side can see any good in the other and there is mutual distrust. That's too bad.

[malaise]

5. this Foley scandal is the proverbial last straw.

and that is the absolute truth.

[David Zephyr]

6. Kicking it up, Catwoman!

[CatWoman]

7. thanks, David

[Change has come]

8. My cat kicks

and reccomends.

[barb162]

17. mine too

[Catherine Vincent]

10. Could it be?

The Foley coverup is finally persuading some of the repukes that were mesmerized by the Bush/Rove juice. I heard some repub talk show host on Scarborough fussing about the Foley debacle.

[seabeyond]

12. five-year affair a mistress .....three decades his junior.....lol lol lol

well, this is how republican should feel. anything less i cannot respect. good on this person whoever he may be. and a thank you to waking up and speaking out

[Canuckistanian]

13. What took him so long?

He obviously seems intelligent, politically aware and wise to the ways of the world.

Is there some dimension of sleaze that he wasn't aware of back in, say, 2001?

For many, I hear, it was the Terry Schiavo affair that finally opened their eyes.

Why the Foley scandal now?

[Alcibiades]

14. The real question:

Why did it take Don Sherwood so long to be caught up in a sex scandal? The man apparently kept his nose clean for a long political career, gets sent to Washington in 1999, and wham! No sooner than his bags are unpacked, he starts an extramarital affair with a woman 30 years younger than himself.

Which raises 2 questions:

Why on earth, after all the divorces and extramarital activities, do the Republicans have any street cred in bibleland as the family values party?

Why is anyone surprised that a man named "Sherwood" can't keep it in his pants?

[Chulanowa]

25. Because bibleland believes that all the bad things Repugs do...

...is a direct result of Bill Clinton doinking an intern.

Those poor Republicans just can't help themselves, now that Clinton made that, pardon the term, slippery slope...

Don'cha know.

[Wednesdays]

27. The magic "R" washeth away all sins

Why on earth, after all the divorces and extramarital activities, do the Republicans have any street cred in bibleland as the family values party?

Because, thanks to the MSM and local media, they still get touted as "squeaky clean Christians."

For example, Mary Fallin is running for a House seat in Oklahoma...no one in the press is talking about this: http://www.okpns.com/2006/05/ok-political-news-service-...
BTW, Fallin is almost certain to win that house seat.

[NNN0LHI]

15. I was thinking about "the last straw" idea yesterday

Foley in and of itself wouldn't have been the deal breaker. Its the past record of lying, incompetence and being corrupt by Bush and the Republicans all along for the past 6 years. This was just the last nail in the coffin.

Don

[Alcibiades]

16. I had gthought Katrina

was the turning point, but I suppose you can have a turning point and a last straw.

[theanarch]

18. funny how so many on this thread...

...missed the biggest point, that what he DIDN'T write is more telling than what he did write: being lied into wars of choice on the basis of manipulated intelligence, bald-faced lies, shrill hyperbole and screamed hysteria, under false pretexts and with hidden agendas (it's the oil, stupid) don't seem to bother Mr Cunningham in the least, as none of them make any part of his critique. Outsourcing torture? The Patriot Act? The Military Tribunals Act? The war profiteering? Apparently, no prob...Concentrating near-dictatoral powers in the person of the most patheticly unqualified president in history? Shredding the Constitution? Eviscerating the Bill of Rights? Hey, what's wrong with that? The corrosive effects of an Executive (and his string-pulling minions) whose dreary rhetoric of "all fear, all hate, all lies, all the time" needlessly polarizes and egregiously divides? Silence. "Morality" is more than just keeping one's pants on. "Character isn't merely keeping one's hands off the objects of (sexual) lust. When the GOP's key demographic of "values voters" finally realizes this, there may just be a glimmer of hope for the country yet.

[springhill]

29. I agree with you..........

It's just amazing to me with all the open criminality of his policies that personal behavior would be the one thing that could turn a voter off.

[illinoisprogressive]

19. They are not really republicans but, neorepublics.

I call them the neorepublics. they are very different from the republican party as we know it. But, democrats have had thier bad days as well. We had FDR and Kennedy and then in the 70s the party became a shadow of it's former self. I guess this is when the republican party does the midlife crises we went through. I do hope they can straighten themselves out to something much better then the criminal ways they are into now. Afterall, as we have seen in the last 6 years, one party rule is very ugly.
I read that Karl Rove is a huge fan of Mark Hannah. He wants to take the country back to those days. Well, seeing how the republicans are now, I'd say they are far more like Boss Tweed's reign in New York in the 1870s.

[Frazzled Educator]

20. Someone quoted my old hometown paper in Monticello, NY?

This used to be one of the worst right wing tabloid rags on the planet.

What happened to "The Horrible Rag?"

[mwar]

21. Any Republic (an)

that is ashamed of this current crop of dopes, yet still pines for the days of Reagan still doesn't get it in my book. I remember those days all too well. There was an idiot in the pilot house, a budding theocracy and corruption at the highest levels. Greed became an institutional virtue and most of the music really sucked.

[Mechatanketra]

22. In-DEED.

It really annoys, nay, infuriates me to always hear even the rare regretful Republican express that regret in terms of the current Republican party "betraying the legacy of Reagan".

Really simple, folks: politically speaking, Bush is Reagan. Specifically, Reagan with a rubberstamp Congress. This is what happens when you run the same playbook against no defense.

[Historic NY]

23. He is from my local paper.............

about time he saw the light.

[Autumn Colors]

24. Wow, & that's my hometown newpaper, no less! :)

I'm surprised no one in my family mentioned this to me! (I no longer live in the area.)

[Vinca]

26. "The Republicans offer me candidates who can't even keep their pants on."

[SteppingRazor]

28. Welcome to the fold!

There's always room for one more.