Is There a Third Option?

By Kanrei

I can see from the fact that the Foley scandal is still news that it is time for a little bit of non-partisan logic to be interjected in the debate. I had hoped that some alert media personality would point out the missing obvious logic, but thus far they have not surfaced. Maybe covering the “he said, she said” aspect is easier than actually doing any real reporting. I can’t say for sure, but the media does seem to be enjoying the game.

I have spent the last few weeks watching the Republicans accuse the Democrats and the Democrats accusing the Republicans over who knew what when. They are pointing fingers back and forth to obfuscate their own part in the scandal and the media is busy trying to take a side instead of saying “you both screwed up royally on this one and you know it.”

The first question is “did the G.O.P. know about Foley’s desire to talk dirty to pages?” The answer is a big and certain YES. Hastert himself has admitted to talking to Foley about emails he received complaints about in 2003. He admits to asking Foley if they were sexual in nature. Why would you ask that unless you suspected or even knew? If you suspected why would you take the person’s word they were not. Did he actually expect Foley to admit to sending sexual emails?

The truth is that Hastert knew about this and made the decision to try and keep it quiet until after the elections. Hastert wanted to handle the scandal quietly and leave open plenty of room to deny knowledge, but he acted in 2003 so he cannot deny knowing Foley was suspected to be doing this. That only leaves his choice to not investigate it and keep a pervert in Congress over losing the seat to the Democrats.

The second question is “did the D.N.C. know about Foley’s desire to talk dirty to pages?” The answer again is a big and certain YES. It almost seems like common knowledge around D.C. that Foley was doing this and it seems that the pages were complaining to anyone who would listen from either party. There is zero chance of the Democrats not at least hearing rumors.

The truth is that the Democrats knew about this problem but were waiting for the most politically beneficial time to release this. They were counting on the strong right-leaning evangelicals being so upset over a gay Republican soliciting young boys that they would sit home on November 7th. They feared the media learning about this with enough time for the Republicans to perform damage control and get Foley off the ballot.

The sad and pathetic truth is that both the Republicans and the Democrats placed a seat in Congress above the welfare of the children entrusted to work with them. Each side is now trying to show that the other side committed more heinous acts for political gain instead of admitting their guilt.

It is like a child who wonders why he is getting introuble when the neighborhood kid did the same thing. I was raised that my guilt has nothing to do with another’s and I am so sad that the leadership of this country seems to think keeping up the Joneses justifies bad actions.

The time for a third party is now and it has never been more right. We obviously cannot trust either party with our security, our welfare, our money, our education, or our children. The system is broken and they broke it. Why are we going to hire the same two stooges to fix the problems they still cannot see they created?