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OpEdNews Op Eds 10/10/2006 at 9:45 PM EDT

Hastert Paradox: Staffers didn't Hide Sex-Scandal, Hastert did

By Dean Powers (Page 1 of 1 pages) 1 comment

J. Dennis Hastert's get-tough-on-crime posturing is the latest in a series of theatrical performances that the Republicans hope will cover their culpability in the Foley sex-scandal. Hastert vowed today to fire any staffers who hid information. There's only one problem: the staffers came clean. Over and over again, staffers came forward and told Hastert that Foley's behavior was raising eyebrows. So Hastert's vows, which look tough at first blush, are meaningless. If Hastert were anything but a double-standard politician he would fire himself.

But that would require loosing power and, of course, Hastert would rather let pedophiles run loose in Congress than loose power. So what makes anyone believe he would actually do anything more than token gestures to the masses that he's getting "tough on crime." How long can he and his co-conspirators feed the public on rhetoric before the hunger in our bellies for the truth tells us we have been duped again.
Meanwhile, his allies in conservative talk radio are drumming up the Saddam Hussein-style fiction that voters really aren't voicing their support for Democrats. If you remember, Hussein expected the world to believe that 98% of Iraqis voted for him. In the same way, Limbaugh, who can't accept that his house of cards is crumbling, keeps telling his listeners that voters are lying. "I predict that the Democrats will be in for a surprise on Election Day," he told his listeners.
He spun authentic support for the Democrats into a fiction of the media. "They don't think that there are voters out there who don't like Howard Dean?" Hussein may have been able to smother the Iraqis in his rise to power, but Americans will not bend to this style of suppression. We are a country that believes strongly in our independence and Democracy. Limbaugh and his allies cannot rewrite our disaffection with the abysmal behavior of the Republicans. He cannot stifle our freedom to vote, and his lies will not prevail on the Republicans' day of reckoning.

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Dean Powers lives in Castleton, VT. He has apprenticed at several newspapers including The Nation. He currently writes for OpEdNews. He can be found at facebook.com/deanppowers.

Related Topic(s): 2006 Elections; Alabama; Colorado; Georgia; Iowa; Kansas; Kentucky; Missouri; South Carolina; Tennessee; (more...) Texas, Add Tags (less...)
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