Larison Lays It On Thick

Daniel Larison sees the Foley thing as a coffin nail for GOP control of Congress, and he's positively giddy:

You cannot switch on a people’s sense of outrage at moral disorder and corruption and then expect them to conveniently switch it off when you are implicated, however indirectly, in these same things. You cannot make rallying against a radical homosexual agenda a prominent part of your appeal while winking and nodding at the misconduct of one of your party’s own homosexuals, especially when he is engaged in behaviour that would be inappropriate for any Congressman. With respect to Iraq, you cannot claim to be the party of responsibility and competence and preside over four years of irresponsibility and incompetence. Eventually, your credibility runs out. You cannot blunder along with no real strategy in the war and then accuse your opponent of having no viable alternative to fix the mess you’ve made. You cannot betray every conservative principle in the book and then say, “You have to look at the big picture. The other guys are really bad!”

This is like nothing so much as a robber who, having just beaten you over the head and taken your wallet, tells you not to go to the police because they are corrupt and might hit you up for a bribe. “How can you pay the bribe, after I have just taken all your money? Think about it. They’re the real enemy here. In fact, I’m really on your side, because I also don’t like the corrupt police. If you could just go get some more money and bring it back to me, I’m sure we could help each other a lot.” If conservatives have any self-respect this year, they will not collaborate in their own fleecing and poor treatment any longer. Like a battered wife who has finally had enough, they must stop making excuses for the party that has abused them for years. They need to stop saying things like, “The world is so dangerous–what will I do without my GOP?” For decades, like some greasy con man who has seduced the gullible mark, the party kept telling the conservatives, “I love you, and one day, baby, we’re going to make it big, and then I’ll get you all the things you ever wanted. I can’t do it without you. Now I just need to borrow some money….” Now that the con man has been found out, he wants her to forget the lies and betrayal and, if at all possible, just give him a little more money.

And he has more:

Tony Blankley and other Republicans who called on Hastert to resign are looking pretty smart right now; Hugh Hewitt (he of the “donate now to the RNC to fight the vast left-wing conspiracy” approach to this scandal’s politics)…well, Hugh Hewitt remains Hugh Hewitt. After the Year of Corruption it would be hard to credit that the latest scandal does not represent a deeper disorder in Congress. In any case, the Goppers made no real effort to stop the political bleeding; they wasted so much of their energy and attention freaking out about George Soros’ evil designs that they put almost no effort into damage control and making amends. So confident were they that their voters would blame Foley and only Foley for the mess that they missed something important about their voters: these people aren’t stupid and they don’t follow blindly, whatever GOP elites may think about them, and they actually hold people in positions of authority responsible for their failures.

Hastert’s speech in front of a cemetary [sic] was a fitting statement on the whole mess. He might as well have been saying, ”I come not to praise the mighty GOP, but to bury it.” Indeed, the inept handling of the scandal has very likely buried them.

I'm still inclined to vote for John Campbell, our local GOP Congressman, not because he has the obligatory dog in the obligatory campaign photo, because I like him and generally agree with his views, but I find it almost impossible to care about these people.

As Steve Sailer has pointed out, the GOP has been stronger among married folk with children, and thus in places where real estate prices are low enough not to discourage breeding.

It is precisely peoople with children who are horrified not so much by Rep. Chickenhawk hmself as by what is at best the tone-deafness of the leadership on something that would be obvious to any parent. “Famiy values,” my a**. And besides, their record otherwise has been worse than undistinguished.

I politically depise Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, John Conyers and the bunch that would run the House if the GOP is turned out, but Speaker Hastert acting like a small-time Bernard Law was too much for me. My own reaction was “Screw these people. If they can’t or won’t protect their own young employees, they deserve no confidence on anything else.”

And Henry Waxman will no doubt conduct some interesting investigations.

Hugh Hewitt is still whistling past the graveyard. His argument is "national security, national security," plus "Look how bad these other guys are." And he has a point--the Dems are a feckless bunch.

There does come a time, though, when, as my wise father said, you have to "throw the rascals out" and elect new rascals. This may be such a year.