Foley Fallout

Okay, okay, so my comment that it was virtually unthinkable that the Foley scandal would be a significant factor nationwide may have been a bit, uh, hasty. Here's the ever-readable Gene Lyons on the Mark Foley scandal: September scandal tops October surprise Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 10/04/06. He writes:

About that "October surprise" that White House political impresario Karl Rove’s been promising Republican congressional candidates: It better be a doozy. If any American political party has had a more farcical interlude than the GOP, it could only be the Whigs, who self-destructed over slavery during the 1850 s. That's not a prediction. Never underestimate the capacity of American voters to be distracted by baubles and bright, shiny objects. Republican scandals have grown so numerous that it's hard to keep them straight. Maybe the best way to think about the easiest one to understand would be in terms of the catch phrases and clichés that invariably will be used to describe it. Internet search engines are helpful. Googling “October surprise," for example, usually defined as a devious, last-minute stunt contrived to outflank the opposition, generates 967, 000 hits. To my surprise, former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards’ immortal boast that he’d have to get caught in bed with “a dead girl or a live boy” to lose an election garnered a mere 2, 170 on-line mentions. Edwards, a Democrat, currently is incarcerated for taking bribes even surpassing Louisiana’s tolerant standards. A charming scoundrel, he never pretended to virtue. During his successful campaign against former Klansman David Duke in 1991, a popular bumper sticker read, “Vote for the crook, it’s important.”

Apparently, it was left to Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley, however, to choose, as a friend put it, Door No. 2: the live-boy option. Unfortunately for him and his party, Foley’s entire political career was built upon GOP “family values” (6. 3 million ). He served until last week as chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

I'd have to say that this is the first I've heard that Karl Rove has been specifically promising Republican candidates an "October surprise". That has an especially sinister sound.

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