When Conservative Defence is Offence & Gay Bashing.

The Foley scandal is everywhere in the American media or on the Internet. [in case you lived in a cave, Foley is the Republican Congressman who had sexually oriented electronic exchanges with male high school juniors who served as interns in Congress].

The interesting development has been the cover up since it seems many fellow Republicans on the hill had been aware of the improper exchanges including House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Majority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio who acknowledged that they had known about at least some of the exchanges as early as last fall (and yet did nothing).

The most fascinating part is to see how some Conservatives defend the GOP leaders no matter what, and as we all know the best defence is offence:

MSNBC Countdown has a great series of clips of the different ways some Conservative pundits have been attacking the “liberals” as a way to divert attention from the real issue. (here via Crooks and Liars)

Tony Snow hinted “at other scandals”, others said “Democrats have scandals of their own”, and of course then came the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
They went back as far as 1983 to dig up a scandal involving a Democrat (Gerry Studds) and a page.

My "favorite" unapologetic comment is this one:

Rush Limbaugh:"There are things that will offend liberals. Our are there? How many of them wish they were in on the action?"

ThinkProgress has also listed other great comments that show how some push vicious anti-gay smears, including, it must be noted the Wall Street Journal editorial:

• Ben Stein, American Spectator: On the one hand, we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys. He sent them suggestive e-mail. I agree, that’s not great. … I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys. [Link]

• Linda Harvey, WorldNetDaily: Open or suspected homosexuals should never be elected. The problem with homosexuals is that they frequently don’t have common sense and don’t acknowledge appropriate boundaries. Weird sex, public displays of “affection” and nudity, and sex with youth are built into the “gay” sub-culture. [Link]

• Wall Street Journal, editorial: But in today’s politically correct culture, it’s easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. [Link]

• Tammy Bruce, political analyst: All I want, frankly, is a gay person in office who is not a sexual compulsive. I mean, is that too much to ask for? [Link]

• Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy In Meda: In fact, the entire scandal might have been avoided if Foley’s homosexuality had been exposed and confronted, rather than protected, over the last several years. [Link]

As Think Progress reminded us, the scandal is NOT about homosexuality but about sex with minors.

I would add that it is about how an elected official had sexually explicit exchanges with minors in Congress while being the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. It is also about how nothing was done by the GOP leadership who knew about it, and it is about the cover up o f the scandal at the highest level by people who run for office on the basis of moral values.