The Mark Foley Issue Boils Down to: How Stupid Are Voters?
By Mary Mostert (10/13/06)
I’ve been involved in politics for 60 years, first as a Democrat and, for the last 35 years, as a Republilcan. My disagreement with both parties from time to time is over the intelligence of the average voter. Many political campaign handlers have told me, and plan campaigns, based on a firm belief that the average voter is stupid. We are seeing this played out in the Mark Foley debate.
A week ago, when the story broke, the charge was that Foley had been” overly friendly” to a 16 year old page. When I discovered, with a bit of research, that Mark Foley was 52 years old and had never been married, I figured that this was a veiled accusation of a homosexual relationship of some sort, such as Massachusett’s Representative Barney Frank’s scandal of 1985 when the congressman answered an ad placed in a Washington, D.C. homosexual paper, the Washington Blade, by Stephen Gobie, a male prostitute. Gobie became Barney Frank’s live-in sexual companion, and was soon running a male prostitution ring from Barney Frank’s condo.
At the time, in spite of their liberal bias, even Massachusetts newspapers urged Barney Frank to resign. Of course he didn’t, and, in fact, should the Democrats take back control of Congress, Barney Frank, a 25 year incumbent, will become chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. His plans are to take your tax dollars in a very different direction. He wants a lot more money for subsidized housing, less money for national security. This would have an economic impact by putting a damper on the real estate market and provide less money for military needs.
I have received a deluge of e-mail, most of it from Republicans who claim they are conservatives, blasting me for even BRINGING up the hypocrisy and deception in national politics in “What Crime Did Bill Clinton/Mark Foley Commit?” While the voting public in Arkansas and nationally simply overlooked charges of sexual harassment and even rape leveled against Clinton, now we are told that being “over friendly” is enough to destroy not only the friendly congressman, but the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and our own Utah Congressman, Chris Cannon, father of eight, who suggested that parents do more to warn their kids about “creepy people” they can run into with e-mail and instant messages.
Furthermore, I, a mere Republican precinct chairman, have been publicly accused of being” sorely lacking on the moral and political fronts” and, worse, being a “blind partisan cheerleader …content with setting your standard at the minimum level that won't result in a conviction.” In Ohio, Rep. Deborah Pryce, a former judge and a 7 term Republican congresswoman may lose to a Democrat whose main campaign issue now is that Rep. Pryce is a friend of Mark Foley’s.
What is going on here is a very concerted effort on a part of certain folks who want to use the Mark Foley issue to gain more political power for their own views. During the Clinton Impeachment the Democrats launched a successful campaign to convince the nation that since it was “only about sex” it was not a REAL impeachable issue. The main argument, only eight years ago, was that “everybody does it” and even lying under oath, if it is about sexual exploitations, was not perjury, which is a felony.
Now the voting public is being urged, by the very same Democrats with the help of Conservative Republicans, to convince voters of the exact opposite philosophy. They are demanding that anyone who is a FRIEND of Mark Foley be defeated on November 7th. I hope I am right in believing the average voter isn’t that stupid or that lacking in Christian values.
What are the FACTS about Mark Foley? Was he a dangerous person – and if so, how come no one, especially all those Democrats who are in favor of homosexual “marriage” failed to notice it until last week? It may never be known, for example, who actually managed somehow to get and keep under cover for either 3 or 5 years a 9 page instant message between Mark Foley and Jordan Edmund. Jordan Edmund today is 21 years old. If, as is charged, he was 16 at the time, that would mean someone preserved that instant message for 5 years. If as reported in the media it was written in 2003, Edmund would not have been a 16 year old page in Washington but would have been an 18 year old – and no longer a minor or a page. And, besides, both Foley and Edmund both claim they were never ever alone together – so whatever took place was speech, not sex.
If we go back to 2001, what sort of Congressman WAS Mark Foley? On November 14, 2001 he said on the floor of Congress: “We are seeing a Commander in Chief pursue terrorism, to pull it out by the root, to remove this insidious and destructive force from America and from the world. I applaud our President at a time when Americans are rallying behind our flag and asking God for his blessings. We are going to get bin Laden, we are going to get those terrorists who are still here in America, and we will not stop this time. Our President will not yield, and he will not end the campaign against those terrorists until we have successfully concluded the mission.” [Page: H8135] President Leads in War on Terrorim-GPO's PDF
Four years ago, on July 18, 2002, as cochairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children Caucus he said, concerning the abduction, rape and murder of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion: “Parents throughout the Nation are both shocked and frightened that this could happen to their child. “Over 2,000 children are reported missing to law enforcement every single day. While Congress focuses on restructuring its homeland security, we must be made aware of the incredible efforts that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies provide in retrieving these children and finding their abductors. We must make sure that these agencies have the manpower and resources necessary to continue these efforts.” [Page: H4875] Protecting Missing and Exploited Children - GPO's PDF
Three years ago, in 2003, Mark Foley spoke on the floor of the house about four children who had been abused by foster parents in California saying, “We are not talking about overdue library books, we are talking about human life. We are talking about children who are allowed to starve, we are talking about a system that is run amuck, and we are talking about only getting a response when some politician's job is on the line. [Page: H11125] Child Safety - GPO's PDF
The Mark Foley issue is also about a system that has run amuck and about human lives – not only of Mark Foley, but Jordan Edmund, Congresswoman Pryce, House Speaker Hastert – and YOU. If you really ARE all that worried about a homosexual in the House of Representatives, do you REALLY want Barney Frank to be in charge of your tax dollars?
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