All Foley, All the Time -- 10/8/06
Most of the news in the last week has been consumed with the latest developments concerning former congressman Mark Foley’s inappropriate and possibly criminal behavior toward the high school-aged congressional pages who come to DC each year to work in Congress, and debates about how much Republican leaders of Congress knew about his behavior and when they knew it.
The coverage of the scandal has been a classic case of a media “feeding frenzy” (see KTR, p. 663) and rather than giving a minute by minute report of events as they have unfolded, I have delayed posting about this until we could see something of what the political fallout would be.
The short answer seems to be that, unlike the Abramoff scandal which involved fairly complex financial and lobbying improprieties, the Foley scandal resonates with the public. Sex scandals make for good gossip and the question of whether the House Republicans violated the public trust in failing to care for kids in their custody is one that strikes at the heart of the family values that the Republicans base much of their electoral appeal on. Since there are already issues of Republican competency in this election, this scandal has what news people call “legs” -- it won’t go away quickly.
Today’s Washington Post has a good piece (Michael Grunwald and Chris Cillizza, Foley Consuming GOP as Elections Draw Near, 10/8/06) on what this scandal means politically for the Republicans, especially on the chances that it will disillusion the party’s value-concerned base and keep them home on election day.
The Foley scandal has hindered Republican efforts to control the agenda in the days leading up to the election and the war news (casualties in Iraq are at a two year high ) will make that difficult even when the scandal begins to recede. That events are taking a measurable toll on Republicans is apparent as the first wave of post-Foley polls come in (See for example, Marcus Mabry, A Political Limbo, Newsweek, 10/7/06.)