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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

The Republican Playbook on Foley: "Let's Find One Lie and Stick to It"

Posted by James L.

Hotline On Call had a couple of very good pieces on the Democratic and Republican political playbooks in the wake of the House Republican Sexual Predator Scandal (and yes, when House Republican leaders are involved in turning a blind eye to keeping a child sex predator in charge of the Congressional Caucus on Missing & Exploited Children, you're damn right I'm calling this an institutional Republican scandal). One thing that really stuck out from the Hotline's Republican playbook is this action item:

Fourth, they'll try to tamp down on internal disagreements about the timeline. This will be hard.

Translation: We better find one lie and stick to it. But isn't it telling, when caught off guard by the initial media scrums last Friday, that Alexander fingered Reynolds, then Boehner fingered Hastert (and then promptly recanted), followed by Reynolds throwing the blame, again, to Hastert? It's classic game theory: if you don't give the criminals a chance to get their "story" straight with each other, they'll throw around all kinds of bombshells when backed into a corner, isolated. Whichever lies the House Republican Leadership concocts to minimize the damage to their careers as politicians, they'll have to deal with the fact that their original media statements were very, very incongruent. They worked all weekend to iron out the edges, but that boulder is already rolling off the cliff. Good luck surviving November, fellas.

Posted at 12:26 AM in 2006 Elections, Scandals | Technorati

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Comments

One Rep. who chose not to subscribe to the playbook was Anne Northup R-KY3. Here the debate has been bizarrely one-sided. John Yarmuth vehemently condemned Foley and the Republican leadership, but did the honorable thing by refusing to politicize it, even when prompted by a reporter to attack Anne Northup. Good for him!

But when Northup had her chance to respond, she came out with no comment. Is this a joke? How difficult is it to condemn a sexual predator?!? Is her head that far up the leadership's *** that she can't form an opinion on this?

Yarmuth came back with a 2nd press conference and seemed legitimately appalled by her inaction. Things are heating up... this is one to watch for sure.

Posted by: voter in the ville at October 3, 2006 02:54 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

How cozy is it that Reynold's Chief of Staff (who just now resigned) was also once Foley's Chief of Staff...hmmmm. Evidently they think this is acceptable contrition..LOL.

Posted by: Predictor at October 4, 2006 02:39 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Back in 2003, Bob Norman of the "Broward-Palm Beach New Times" broke the story outing then Congressman Mark Foley. The Miami-Herald picked up the story from there, in other words it got exposure beyond this local alternative news paper.

http://www.newtimesbpb.com/blogs/

Posted by: Predictor at October 4, 2006 10:04 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment