It must be awkward to be a U.S. Senator who has been caught schtupping a staffer’s wife who also happened to be a paid employee. I mean, it must be awkward to go before thirty-nine other senators (almost all of whom ran for office on a family-values platform) and explain your behavior. What do you say? It seems like, “My Bad” is a bit inadequate to the task.
Does he promise not to pursue any one else’s wife? Does that apply to just his own staff, or should it be a more general promise? I don’t know where you begin a conversation like that. Maybe you just blame it on the alcohol and go to Betty Ford. Drunkenness is one of the few socially-acceptable excuses for socially unacceptable behavior. You just say, “Hell, I was on ten month bender, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But, I’m better now. I’m in recovery.” This works very well, but, unfortunately, it usually requires some actual time in rehab. Sen. Ensign might not have the time.
I actually don’t think Ensign is automatically vulnerable. Vitter did almost as bad, and he looks like a lock for reelection. And Vitter likes to dress up like a baby in diapers and lick giant lollipops, or something. At least Ensign isn’t providing that kind of visual to his colleagues. If Ensign lays off the sauce, he should be fine…regardless of what his tells his colleagues behind closed doors today.
I suppose Jesus has to be involved. But does he have to watch?
Meh. He lost his leadership position and my guess is that the rest of the Senators in his caucus will see that as “punishment” enough. After all, Ensign had a run-of-the-mill affair with a staffer – it’s not like he was hiding something really weird in his closet. Half the guys in that room will probably be thinking something along the lines of “better him than me” and mentally going over their own checklist of steps that they’ve taken to prevent their own affairs from seeing daylight.
We’ll see if the voters of Nevada care one way or the other about it by 2012 (which is when it looks like his next campaign will be). Doubtful, actually – in the end few people really care about stuff like this except in the prurient sense that they care about any extra-marital affair that anyone somewhat famous is having. They expect their politicians to be scumbags and when they prove to be scumbags no one is surprised.
Actually, Dan Savage speculated that when Ensign kept on and on about Mr. Hampton being a very good friend that perhaps this continued because there may have been some “swinging” involved. It’s one thing to cheat, it’s quite another to swing. So maybe there’s more to the sex than we’ve heard yet. Maybe this will require the Hamptons going down in a small plane crash.
Also, Mrs. Hampton was second-in-command at the NRCC when her boss was waltzing millions of dollars out the door. Was the embezzling part of this mess? Maybe she was so busy getting down with the Senator that she didn’t see the widespread criminal activity at her job.
Then there is the question about The Family, The Family’s ownership of the house where Ensign and Coburn live. Did Ensign have trysts there? Is this where Mr. Hampton had his intervention with Coburn “and other men” present? And what is Coburn’s role in this and has it been appropriate as a Christian for him to have kept silent on the matter?
I don’t expect word one in the mainstream media about any Family involvement here, or any of the other of the curious stories that touch this. I suspect very soon it will be buried in the memory hole right next to Gus Boulis.
while it’s hurt his pupularity significantly, it doesn’t look like a deal breaker with the nevada electorate according to this: SEX SCANDAL: Ensign’s approval rating drops…”But he’s still Nevada’s most popular senior elected official“
barring some really odious revelations in the future all’s likely to be forgotten by 2012.
And the MSM will ignore any promising leads on this story and forget it ever happened. Why, after a brief period of quietude I’d expect Senator Ensign to become a regular on the Sunday morning talk show circuit.
what i want to know was “is she hot?” and “what positions did they do it in?”
if our discourse is going to be THAT stupid and juvenile, and apparently it has to be, than i’m under no obligation to treat it seriously.
perhaps i will call up his office and inquire.
do you think they did it in his office? on the desk?
or was it at a hotel?
Then again, we don’t know if diapers were involved in Ensign’s case or not. We don’t know what Ensign or the staffer’s habits are in that respect. For all we know, Ensign could have gone all Marv Albert(I hope someone of you remembers what happened to the sportscaster) on us.
I’m betting that he did Mrs. White in the conservatory with a candlestick…
on his desk, using the constitution as a condom.
where nobody cares who fucks who unless it interferes with their job.
The woman’s husband may care but we shouldn’t.
nobody cares who fucks who unless it interferes with their job.
In this case he may have been being blackmailed. For a sitting Senator that’s pretty much textbook “interfering with their job”. I wonder if the guy just got money or if he got some political favors out of this whole thing.
Unfortunately no one is going to investigate that question because it doesn’t sell papers.
fucking who the whole blackmailing thing sort of goes by the wayside.
Doesn’t it?
Yes, I suppose if we lived in such a world no one would bother to blackmail anyone over it.
But we don’t. So I really would like to know whether Ensign was blackmailed or not and if anything he did in the Senate was compromised because of it.
I think there’s a good solid chance that Ensign wasn’t blackmailed at all and he or someone on his staff made it up because he wanted to discredit his former staffer and make himself look like a victim instead of a cad. But we won’t know until there’s an actual investigation into whether there was some quid pro quo going on or not. And I’m afraid that investigation will never happen because no one in the Senate is going to push for it and the reporters covering this story all are more interested in the salacious bits and not the process bits.
that this is essentially rape?
He was her boss. This is sexual compulsion.
What is the voluntary, consenting-adults aspect of a boss fucking a worker?
He’s vulnerable if his opponent(s) makes him vulnerable. It ain’t just screwing, it’s betrayal and some pretty damning financial maneuvers.
They made such an issue out of Clinton-it went on literally for years, and years, and years. Still going on-actually. I don’t have a forgiving bone in my body when it comes to these hypocrites.
They shove Jesus down everybody’s throat, while they’re up everybody’s ass-in more ways than one-and it’s all over Washington! I love to be petty! Just watch me!
him being a hypocrite is one thing. ‘Follow the money’ on this one, Booman. Rachel Maddow has been doing so…and the trail is interesting. Not just her, but her whole damn family.
him being a hypocrite is one thing. ‘Follow the money’ on this one, Booman. Rachel Maddow has been doing so…and the trail is interesting. Not just her, but her whole damn family.