Boatload Of Excuses - Congressman Mark Foley

For a man who said he takes full responsibility for his misdeeds in the Congress, Mark Foley sure doesn’t seem like a man who is really contrite. First he says he is an alcoholic and checks himself into a testament facility so he doesn’t have to face the American people and the news media. Then he blames a priest for abusing him over 40 years ago and while he doesn’t blame this activity for his actions in the Congress, why is he bring it up at this time? If former Congressman Foley is looking for sympathy from the American people, I think he is going to find few folks who will buy into his boatload of excuses for his actions. For one thing Mr. Foley has used his political office to pass laws that would put other people in jail for doing the exact same thing he has done. Being an alcoholic or suffering child abuse does not cause this type of hypocritical behavior.

Usually when people make a mistake, apologize and ask for forgiveness there is a period of time when the person who made the mistake must take stock of what they have done and even though it is hard, they must make changes in their life which will take weeks, if not years to accomplish. My personal feeling is that former Congressman Foley is just playing a games with the American people and prosecutors with the hope he will not be charged with a crime and after all the media attention dies down he will continue on his merry way and once again start his disgusting behavior with young boys. In my life, I have met people who are quick to apologize, but slow to make changes in their life which would eliminate the need to constantly be apologizing in the first place. I even know a few folks who will apologize and then say something like, “I still meant every word of what I said”. Talk like this is not a real apology, but just a way of continuing bad talk and behavior.

I keep coming back to the old saying of “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones” which basically means that none of us are without fault and we should mind our own business when it comes to how other people choose to live their own lives. Former Congressman Foley, on many occasions, was supportive of laws, which would crack down hard on people who engaged in the abuse of children. However, at the end of the day, he himself was a perpetrator of such activities, which makes his case so much worse than the average person on the street. I know some parents who are fond of telling their children to ‘do as I say, not as I do” and maybe former Congressman Foley falls into that camp. Just like children, the American people are going to judge a person more on what they do, rather than what they say. With this in mind, Mr. Foley should remove himself from the public eye forever and go back to the ground level in his life and get his priority back in line so he has a chance of living a better second half of his life than the first.

New GOP Leadership Needed Badly For Change

If the polls are right and Republicans lose control over the Congress early next month, then maybe for the first time in years GOP rank and file members will have a chance to find new leaders who will rebuild the party for the next generation. Politics and real life are very similar when it comes to a change of direction because a completely new strategy will only happen once the bottom falls out of a current path. Most members of the current Republican leadership in Washington can trace their roots back to the Ronald Reagan revolution, but over the years, many GOP leaders have lost sight of what that revolution was really all about and instead of continuing the fight that President Reagan got started years ago, new leadership has instead picked up the old habits of Democrats which eventually brought their party down over the years.

Now the political cycle of power leading to corruption has hit the “Grand Old Party” and the people who placed their faith in the GOP back during the days of Ronald Reagan are in the process of taking their party back from the impostors who have stolen it from the Ronald Reagan true believers. Many people may not remember John F. Kennedy, but during his days in the White House he was a very conservative man who believed deeply in a strong national defense of the United States. After his death in the early 1960’s the Democratic Party started moving left and eventually became so liberal that most Americans rejected their national politics. The Republican party has made the same type of move since Ronald Reagan, but instead of drifting left, politically, they have veered hard right and have found the same dead end road with the American people as the Democrats did before them.

Over the years I have found that the only true way to succeed in a democracy is through a course of moderation. Most people wish to be left alone by their government and not told what to think and what to do in their daily lives. Both extremes in the Democratic and Republican party are too focused on imposing their views of the country on everyone else whether people want to follow their narrow minded views or not. A good government is one where leaders defend the rights of all Americans from foreign threats and uphold the Constitution which protects all of us from the very leaders who sometimes lose their way and believe they should impose their will on the American people. Another issue which I believe is making the situation worse when it comes to Washington political leaders is the whole out of control fund raising system that both major political party’s spend time supporting.

Just because some people and companies have more money than other folks, doesn’t mean that they should be allowed to run the country by giving huge sums of money to political candidates. I doubt if the Supreme Court will allow many additional restrictions to be placed on the raising of money by candidates in the future, but they should because campaign contributions are like a cancer growing on the American political system and if that cancer is not removed it will continue to grow and eventually undermine the very Constitution which is protecting this wonderful country. Most Americans are moral by their very nature and while a small percentage of greedy people will try and work the American system of government for their own political advantage, the vast majority of people want the government to be fair and always try and do the right thing. Hopefully, the days of big money politics will slow in upcoming years and the GOP will find new leaders which will be more interested in doing the right thing and less interested in raising big money in order to protect their own political power. Only time will tell, but I will remind hopefully for a new and better Republican Party in the years to come.

Bush Remains Confident GOP Will Win In November

President Bush told Fox News the other day that he is confident that Republicans will maintain control of the US House of Representatives and Senate after next month’s elections. The Fox News reporter asked the president if he had a contingency plan to deal with the possibility he was wrong and the president said no. Doesn’t this seem like the same type of attitude President Bush has been using in Iraq? He seems to refuse to accept that things might go wrong and when they do he just says, “stay the course” instead of having a fall back plan. Real leaders understand that the best made plans sometimes look much better on paper then they do in the real world and that is why smart folks have a back up plan, just in case.

Maybe President Bush and Karl Rove know something the rest of us don’t about what is going to happen between now and the November election, but I am beginning to wonder if they are clueless about what is really happening with the American electorate right now? The American people are more angry at this point in time than I have ever seen them and “staying the course”; whether in Iraq or going into this next election is not a wise strategy for smart political people who should at least know how to read public opinion polls. My guess is that both President Bush and Karl Rove understand that the Republican Party is going down to defeat in November, but they are just trying to put the best face on a bad situation.

The best thing that could happen to the Republican’s who are running for reelection would be for President Bush and Rove to keep their mouths shut and quit talking like winners when the whole party structure they are in charge of protecting is falling apart right in front of them. I remember how angry it made me, a life long Republican, when Rove and others said that only Democrats wanted Terri Schiavo to be allowed to die and only Democrats were against the UAE Ports deal. Every time these so called political experts open their mouth and insult their own Republican voters, they do a disservice to the entire GOP. In recent years, leaders in the Republican Party have used scorched earth politics to fight criticism of the policies, even when a majority of Republican rank and file members have disagree with their policy.

Now the whole Republican infrastructure is going to fall, big time, next month because true political leadership is always from the bottom up and not the top down. This top down thinking is what will cause history to view President Bush in a negative way, even though it will take the president many years to see why and how his political power was drained away. There is nothing wrong with having a positive mental attitude, but singing songs of joy while your own house is burning down doesn’t make sense to most Americans and it really doesn’t make sense to members of your own political family. My gut still tells me that there is going to be a major voter revolt in November, which will make the 1994 sweep of Congress by the GOP look like a small storm in comparison.