Sen. John Ensign is not only not resigning but he plans to run for reelection. There is a strange lack of shame that accompanies the Republicans’ paternal moralizing. It seems there is almost nothing a Republican can do, either legally or personally, that disqualifies them from office or takes away their right to sit in smug judgment of others. I’m glad that Ensign is going to run for reelection because he will provide a natural rebuke to every thing the Republicans try to say about personal morality for the next four years. It will also force the RNSC to spend millions on what would have been a safe seat if Ensign hadn’t disgraced himself.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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What shameful crops the Republican leadership harvests. The Grand Old Party is way past the end of the beginning (of its demise) and, perhaps, is approaching the beginning of its end. IMO it can’t come soon enough.
This is utterly non-surprising. Utterly. David Vitter – who employed prostitutes while in office – refused to step down and is planning on running for re-election in 2010. Dead woman or live boy is the operative condition for when a GOP Senator needs to step down.
What’s more, there’s almost no reason that Ensign should have to step down over this. This part that makes it a “remove from office” offense is the cover-up, not the affair. The affair possibly makes him an asshole (depending on how open his marriage is, and how consensual it was with his staffer) but being an asshole is almost a prerequisite for being a Senator. The cover-up means that he was possibly being blackmailed and had secrets worthy of blackmail to hide – that makes him a liability to his state and a danger in office. The steps he took to cover-up the affair are the scandal here, not the affair itself.
But I won’t be surprised at all if he gets re-elected in 2012. Republicans don’t care about scandals except when they happen to Democrats – they’re useful clubs to beat the opposition with, not anything more than that.
Will Daddy pay his campaign costs too?
This group at C street under Doug Coe sounds really scary, the more I read about it. But guess who said this, about Douglas Coe?
Nope. It wasn’t Ensign. Or Sanford. Or any other right-wing crazy.
It was Hillary Clinton.
.
(Harper’s Magazine) – Surely, brother. It is April 2002, and I have lived with these men for weeks now, not as a Christian–a term they deride as too narrow for the world they are building in Christ’s honor–but as a “believer.” I have shared the brothers’ meals and their work and their games. I have been numbered among them and have been given a part in their ministry. I have wrestled with them and showered with them and listened to their stories: I know which man resents his father’s fortune and which man succumbed to the flesh of a woman not once but twice and which man dances so well he is afraid of being taken for a fag. I know what it means to be a “brother,” which is to say that I know what it means to be a soldier in the army of God.
The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of The Family‘s leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.”
Dysfunction in the Fellowship Family (pdf)
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Perhaps Governor Spitzer left too soon. < coughing >
He could hardly be more unpopular than Paterson.
Spitzer’s problem is that he’s a Democrat who made enemies of a lot of finance guys on Wall Street. He wasn’t going to stay in office because his enemies were going to make damn sure that the first scandal that hit him broke him. Ensign hasn’t made those kinds of enemies, so he only has to worry about what his political enemies do with the ammunition he’s handed them – and that’s not going to be nearly as tough.
(Not that I have any great love for Spitzer – he did a lot of good things on the finance front and I’m sorry that his actions have marginalized his voice there and that there’s no one there to pick up the ball from him and run with it. But to be working to throw prostitutes in prison with maximal sentences on the one hand while simultaneously frequenting other prostitutes is the mark of a real asshole. Add that to the fact that he HAD to know that the bankster enemies he’d made over the years were looking for ANYTHING to take him down a peg and discredit him and you have not only an asshole, but a reckless idiot. Still, if he’d been a Republican who didn’t have such rich enemies he probably could have kept his job.)
Wasn’t Diaper Dave reelected after his incident? The whole charm of conservatism is that it does not matter what you do so long as you believe in the right things. A little like the selling of indulgences.
nope. he hasn’t faced the voters, yet.
The big question is can the democrats come up with someone strong to run against him? This seems to be an on going problem within our party and that’s why these guys kep getting re elected no matter how sleazy they are. Kaine needs to step up with some campaign money and get rid of Ensign and Vitter and perhaps a few Blue Dogs along the way.
But we just sit around and yawn. Oh WELL we say. Can’t get anyone to run.
Because the repentance matters more.
And this may be why Catholism is so “unforgiveable” by the mainstream Christian Conservatives: the Catholic Church has no interest in repenting for all the pedophiles they continue to harbor.
At least Sanford and others have the “decency” to publicly flog themselves, in a sense.