A Good article

I read a good article written by Jessica McBride in GM Today. Check it out-

Mixed messages
Dems stirring election pot by touting Foley connections that don’t exist
By JESSICA McBRIDE

We should be able to agree on two things:

Disgraced former Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is a scumbag.

Disgraced Florida Republican Mark Foley has nothing to do with John Gard, Jim Sensenbrenner and Mark Green.

You’d think they were the ones caught IM’ing a teenage page with the hyperbolic press releases from the state Democratic Party this week. (For the record, they haven’t.)

Sample headline: John Gard should give back campaign cash from top Republicans who covered up Foley scandal!

Is this the new standard for corruption in Wisconsin? If you once took money a really long time ago from someone who might not have done enough (at least, according to the media and Democrats) to ferret out a congressman who later turns out to be a scumbag ... you’re corrupt? Forgive me for thinking that real corruption had to do with things like rigging bids to favor campaign contributors. Or making sexual overtures to teenage pages.

Mark Foley is corrupt. He just has nothing whatsoever to do with Wisconsin. Or at least he shouldn’t have anything to do with Wisconsin politics. But, in truth, he does. He’s become the latest Washingtonian bogeyman in the state races, following Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and even Dick Cheney. The Democrats keep trying to put scary Washington Halloween masks - Foley, DeLay - on every decent Wisconsin Republican.

The Democratic strategy is not to educate you on issues. It’s not to run on their record. They are trying to federalize our state elections. All politics is local? Not to the Democrats. They aren’t talking much about local issues because the public largely isn’t on their side when it comes to vetoing real property tax freezes. They want you to forget Jim Doyle is even on the ballot. They want you to think Mark Foley is.

It’s clearly orchestrated. They’re calling it the Foley Effect. The national Hotline blog outlines the strategy: Tar every single Republican candidate in a major race around the country with the Foley mess. Do it with distortion. Conflate the sexually explicit IMs (which House leadership apparently knew nothing about) with the weird but nonsexual e-mails (which they decided weren’t enough to do more than tell Foley to knock it off.) Several media organizations and the FBI also had the nonsexual e-mails months ago and decided they weren’t enough to act, by the way. And who sat on the sexually explicit IMs until right before the midterm elections?

It’s interesting how only Republican congressional scandals are painted as endemic corruption. I don’t recall Nancy Pelosi and Jim Doyle being on the media hot seat for weeks after a Louisiana congressman was caught stuffing $90,000 into his freezer. Democratic Rep. Gerry Studds actually had sex with a teenage page back in the 1980s and was merely censured for it. And I haven’t even gotten to Bill Clinton and Barney Frank yet. Republicans tended to see those matters as personal failures.

If the Democrats in Wisconsin can get you to see every race on the ballot as a contest between Washington values and Wisconsin values, they could win. One recent poll showed that the Washington tag is hurting Mark Green, especially with seniors. Gard faces a tough fight against a millionaire allergist up in the Fox Valley who is so out there he thinks tax freezes are an ethics problem and should be prohibited. And Sensenbrenner? Well, he’s just vulnerable in liberal dreams.

It’s not that the Republican leadership in Washington has done everything well. They haven’t. It’s just that connections to anyone in Wisconsin are tenuous at best. John Gard isn’t even in Congress yet! And he didn’t even take money from Foley.

One of the most prominent liberal bloggers in the state admitted the Democratic strategy. He wrote:

"In the spirit of all politics being local, I thought I’d make sure that all of my fellow Wisconsinites had the full skinny on the various Mark Foley connections to be made. For those keeping score, we can slightly ding Mark Green (who is currently running for governor), bother F. Jim Sensenbrenner (running for re-election in the WI-05), and nail John Gard (running to replace Green in the WI-08

No Wisconsin Republicans are in the House leadership, which covered up Mark Foley’s inappropriate and possibly illegal activity. The closest we get is F. Jim Sensenbrenner who, as Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, helped shepherd the Adam Walsh Act through Congress, and, in fact, stood near Foley as Bush signed the bill.

That nefarious Jim Sensenbrenner. He once shepherded a bill to protect children. Let’s tar him with it! Let’s tell voters we’re doing it because we’re concerned about "protecting the children."

Disgusting.

Yes, I agree with Jessica, it is disgusting.

Quick- someone name me one issue the national Democrats are working on right now. Taxes, minimum wage, health care, national security? Can anyone think of anything?