Watching the Republicans spin the Foley affair is making me dizzy! It’s a truly fascinating exercise in desperation, though, that you really cannot take your eyes off for a moment.

The most hysterical tactic taken by many conservatives is to turn Mark Foley into a Democrat. Representative Peter King (R-NY) was on Fox News last Tuesday accusing Foley of hanging with a “Hollywood” crowd and being “out there,” obviously trying to make him sound like a liberal in Republican clothing (Fox News, 10/3/06). My favorite female pundit, Ann Coulter, wrote in her blog last week that Foley’s “drinking problem has a certain Democratic ring to it” (anncoulter.com, 10/4/06). But I think my favorite moment was when Fox News actually ran a banner on the bottom of their screen pronouncing: Former Congressman Mark Foley (D-FL). When all else fails, I guess you just re-assign the guy to the other party. (God bless Jon Stewart’s Daily Show for bringing this one to my attention after a long day – it was the first time I’d laughed out loud in ages!)

Okay, so most folks aren’t buying the Foley-as-Democrat strategy, and the Republicans know it. So do they step up like responsible adults and say, “Our bad. Sorry. We screwed up.” Of course not! They point to the media and at their political opponents and scream, “They should’ve told us!” Which is just what Katherine Harris did in an interview with a local news channel in Orlando, Florida. Harris said, “…the Republicans didn’t know about these issues and we’re going to be very anxious to find out who in the media and on the other side of the aisle (Democrats) knew about it and kept this from the public interest, because our children were at stake” (democraticunderground.com, 10/4/06). Evidently, the Republicans are so busy running the U.S. into debt and alienating every other nation on the planet, they cannot possibly be expected to keep tabs on their own party members.

Then there’s the old standby tactic: remind the public how horrible the Democrats are by dredging up as much old dirt as possible. That was Ann Coulter’s approach last week; she brought up the Gerry Studds scandal from 23 years ago. She was especially appalled by Studds’ refusal to step down when his behavior was discovered, and she was quite proud of Foley’s decision to run and hide in rehab and let his party scramble to deal with the mess. The final outrage for Ms. Coulter? Gerry Studds’ constituents actually re-elected him! Guess she forgot about Don Sherwood, the Pennsylvania Republican who was re-elected after he was caught cheating on his wife with a woman who accused him of trying to strangle her.

Finally, the conservatives are trying to play the gay card. (Hey, wait a minute! That’s our card!) Here’s the problem, though: they don’t believe in it, so it’s coming out all wrong. It’s like a KKK Grand Dragon walking up to Jesse Jackson and saying, “Hey, n*&%%@r, how’s it hangin’?” He could pretend that he was just using the n-word in the way a fellow black man would, but we all know that the feeling behind the word is NOT the same. So here we have Newt Gingrich on Fox News claiming that the conservatives could not remove Foley from his posts for fear of being accused of gay-bashing. Funny, that didn’t seem to bother the party when it was legislating against gay marriage. Newt, pedophilia, no matter what your sexual preference, is wrong; it takes a true homophobe to equate being gay with being a pedophile.

Ann Coulter’s confused about the gay angle too. She tried to reduce it to a bulleted list, but she couldn’t really make heads or tails out of it. I’ll be happy to do it for you, Ms. Coulter, and I’ll even do it in bullets if it will make it easier for you to understand.

• If you are a homosexual member of the Boy Scouts, Democratic party, U.S. military or any other strong, positive organization, good for you.
• If you are a homosexual in an organization that spouts hatred and homophobia (i.e., Catholic Church, Republican Party), I urge you to examine your self-esteem issues. It might also behoove you to remove yourself from that organization before they do it for you.
• If you’re dating Liza Minnelli, you have bigger problems to deal with than your sexuality. (By the way, Ms. Coulter, if you’re going to insult people, you could at least spell their names correctly.)

The bottom line? The Foley scandal’s not going to change the votes of die-hard Republicans. They’ll be happy to buy into all the excuses the conservatives are putting out there. Folks in the middle, though, who are tired of this government’s refusal to take responsibility for any of its many mistakes, are going to make a change. Foley is a hypocrite; he preyed on underage boys while leading a crusade against sexual predators. The Republican leaders are hypocrites; they turned a blind eye to Foley’s escapades while they held up the banner of family values. And now they refuse to own up to any of it, choosing instead to blame anyone else they can think of and deserting their own man in his hour of need. Truly, they are all pillars of moral virtue.