The GOP's Foley Strategy: Blame The Democrats, The Internet, And The "Gay Cabal"

It looks like the GOP's strategy to blame the Democrats for the Foley Scandal might have hit a bit of a snag. From The Hill (via AmericaBlog):

The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley's (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.

That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.

The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House.

But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.

The source bolstered the claim by sharing un-redacted e-mails in which the former page first alerted his congressional sponsor's office of Foley's attentions. The copies of these e-mails, now available to the public, have the names of senders and recipients blotted out.

These revelations mean that Republicans who are calling for probes to discover what Democratic leaders and staff knew about Foley's improper exchanges with under-age pages will likely be unable to show that the opposition party orchestrated the scandal now roiling the GOP just a month away from the midterm elections.

Of course, the corollary to the GOP's "Blame the Democrats" strategy is that the many Republicans who knew that Foley was a kid diddler never would have come forward with any of this until after the election. As I mentioned before, I think it is hysterical that certain members of the GOP are alleging that the Democrats were the ones playing politics here when it was Republicans who covered up this whole Foley thing in order to protect a House seat.

But unfortunately, I'm sure the GOP will just continue blaming Democrats for all of this, despite what The Hill article reveals. The following comment from the AmericaBlog site pretty much nails it:

The Hill story makes the assumption (wrongly of course) that the GOP is serious about this being a Dem plot. They know very well it is not -- they just need a talking point to broadcast out to the rubes and assorted mental defectives who get all their info from Rush, Hannity, et al.

Disproving that story in the Hill is useless as it will never, ever reach the audience the GOP is aiming for.

This is why FauxNews identified Foley as a Democrat the other day (and if any of you out there thinks that Fox did not do that intentionally, then I've have some Enron stock to sell you). The goal of the GOP and its operatives in the Media isn't to convince voters generally -- the goal is to keep the morons who still support Bush and the GOP on board. The upcoming mid-term elections just need to be close enough so that the GOP can steal them, and that cannot happen unless a lot of brain-dead, right-wing, Heil-Hannity-watching idiots show up to the polls in November.

By the way, Denny Hastert just came on television and blamed the Internet for all of this. His exact quote: "Our system obviously isn't designed for the electronic age of instant messages." He also appears to be blaming the congressional staffs for the Foley Scandal, and not the House Members themselves.

With regard to the "blame the Congressional Staffs" strategy, I think folks like Josh Marshall and David Corn are right -- what is going to happen here is that Hastert and the GOP will come out and blame a "Gay Cabal" in Congress for all of this (Think Progress has the details here). The allegation will be that this Gay Cabal is made up of congressional aides who went out of their way to protect perverts like Foley. Indeed, David Corn is reporting that that a list of "top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay" is now being circulated.

Such a tactic will obviously appeal to the Christo-Fascists who make up a large percentage of the above-described GOP base. But it is a risky strategy, because a lot of these gay-hating Christians will be angry at Republicans for hiring folks who are openly homosexual.