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Protesting a Bit Too Much

Friday October 20, 2006

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From Providence, Rhode Island
US Chamber of Commerce
Regional Government Affairs Meeting

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Hamlet Act III, scene 2

The Mark Foley story appears to be losing some steam. I suspect the National Democrats are beginning to get some heat from Gay Democrats that this is getting pretty close to the kind of Gay bashing they have accused Republicans of waging for decades.

Remember the outrage when the Boy Scouts of America decided that openly Gay men would not be permitted to be Scoutmasters? "BEING GAY DOES NOT MEAN BEING A PEDOPHILE" we were told day after day.

That, as it happens, is a statement with which I agree. Pedophiles come in all shapes and sizes; Straight and Gay being two of them.

The anti-Boy Scout sentiment ran so high among Liberals eager to protect the image of Gays that the BSA has been refused the right to use Federal land for their Jamborees.

Ok. Gay does not equal pedophile. Got it. No prob.

In the frenzy which followed the Foley resignation, the news media went after Rep. Jim Kolbe - an openly Gay Republican from Arizona - for having gone on a camping trip with FORMER Pages; the implication being he might have been preying on them.

Let's get this straight: Gay does not equal pedophile. Perfectly OK to have a Gay Scoutmaster. But Jim Kolbe - one of the true gentlemen in the US House, by the way - must have had wicked intentions when he took that camping trip.

The Foley story is spinning out of the control of the Democrats and their allies in among the Gay Left were getting concerned.

So now �

We are back on National Security. And National Security is absolutely the last issue on which the Democrats want this election to turn.

The other day on CNN, occasional debate opponent Paul Begala was in a projectile sweat about the warning that someone had posted a threat against seven NFL stadia this week.

Begala was adamant that this was a story planted by the Bush Administration solely for the purpose of reminding America that we are at war.

Put aside the fact that every single person who has drawn a Federal paycheck over the past six years is on record saying that they put no credence in the warning, but that they felt it was prudent to make it public.

The media, not the Bush Administration picked up the story and have been lateralling it, like a football with no time left on the clock, back-and-forth down the field trying keep the story alive.

Paul, methinks, was protesting a bit too much. The Democrats want to keep this election from sliding back into a referendum on who can best protect America from where they have it now: Who can best run the House Page program.

Yesterday, I got a call from a senior political reporter asking if I thought the Democrats were taking a harder line on Iraq and whether that would help them.

I said that would play directly into the hands of Republicans locked in close elections.

There is, I continued, a strong feeling among Americans away from the two coasts that there is a strong "peacenik" strain which has never been fully bred out of the DNA of the National Democrats.

If the Dems make Iraq the centerpiece of their closing strategy, they will be seen - well, described by people such as me - as adopting the dreaded cut-and-run strategy.

If that happens, all a Republican candidate has to say is: See? Vote for my Democratic opponent and that's what you'll get: The Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Al Sharpton foreign policy.

Begala is a smart guy. He is trying to send a message to Democratic candidates to stay away from this being a referendum on national security.

New Topic: The Palm Restaurant in Washington has, as do all Palm Restaurants, caricatures of people from the area. As it happens, my caricature is on the wall just as you enter the restaurant.

As it also happens - although I didn't notice this until Wednesday when it became more-or-less a running joke - my drawing is right next to that of � Mark Foley's.

I'm going to say this one last time: I never had �

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to Hamlet; a Mullfoto over which I laughed out loud; and the Catchy Caption of the day which is the wall at the Palm Restaurant.

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