We lost because people voted for the party of "morals"

[fishface]

Rep. Henry Hyde Broke up a family during his seven year
adulterous affair!

George H W Bush: Linda Tripp says had he an affair with a
woman named "Jennifer"

Newt Gingrich Dumped his ex-wife while she was in a
hospital bed suffering from cancer....

Bob Dole Cheated on his first wife with his current
wife, Elizabeth Dole.

Former Rep. Bob Dornan Reported to have cheated on and
beaten his wife.

Ronald Reagan Dumped Jane Wyman by cheating on her with
several Hollywood starlets

William Cohen Dumped his white wife for a new black one.

Rush Limbaugh Fat as he may be, he cheated on two of
his three wives...

Michael Deaver Was so drunk he doesn't remember hiring
hookers...

John Warner Dumped his wife for Elizabeth Taylor...

Bill Randall A Florida Congressional candidate and
minister, he fathered an illegitimate child during his
affair!

Bill McCartney Promise Keepers founder who didn't keep
his Promise to his wife and then lied about it for 20
years!

Rep. Dan Burton Had at least six adulterous affairs, and
fathered a bastard son who, today, he ignores!!

Rep. Bob Barr Cheated on all three of his wives - and
coerced one into having an abortion - then lied about it!

Rudolph Giuliani Boffs his assistant in Gracie Mansion
while his wife stays home with the kids!

Sen. Strom Thurmond Cheated on his fourth wife at age
88!! Then there's that illegitimate child with a black teenager.

Gilbert Davis Paula Jones' attorney, who allowed himself
to be videotaped DrUnK during his adultery!

Bob Packwood Drank huge amounts of hard liquor and then
tongue-kissed his female staffers against their will!

Beverly Russell The Christian Coalition coordinator who
molested his stepdaughter Susan Smith, who later killed
her own kids.

LA. Rep. Bob Livingston - The GOP Speaker-to-never-be,
who cheated on his wife Bonnie - with at least four women!

Michael Huffington - The Former GOP Congressman who
cheated on his wife Arianna - with other men!

Rep. Helen Chenoweth - Who screwed most every married
male member of the Idaho Legislature

Waterbury Mayor Philip Giordano sent to jail for getting nasty with underage girls

Matthew Glavin leaderof a conservative legal group that pushed to have President Clinton disbarred for lying under oath about an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky got caught groping an undercover agent (male)

Somehow thinking that their message should resonate with us doesn't hold much water in my book..

[calimary]

1. We had an example of that here in California, too.

No, not Arnold in this case (although there's a whole chapter that could be written just about him). There was a state senator during the 70's named John Schmitz, from Orange County, who was a world-class knuckle-dragger, horribly intolerant and judgmental. His daughter is Mary Kay Letourneau.

[auburngrad82]

2. Here's some more. I've been a busy little beaver researching the pigboys.

Exit polls during the 2004 elections indicated that most voters felt that “moral issues” were the most important issues that influenced their choices when it came to casting their votes. The GOP has long touted itself as the party of moral integrity. Because of this, the GOP picked up seats in both the House and the Senate and, as we all know, won the Presidency.

Unfortunately, the people of the United States have been sold faulty goods. It seems that the credo of the GOP should be “do as we say, not as we do,” when it comes to morality. There are numerous examples of how GOP members do not practice what they preach.

Take Henry Hyde, for example. The Congressman from Illinois had an affair with Cherie Snodgrass that eventually led to the breakup of Ms Snodgrass’ marriage. Mr Hyde attributed the affair to “youthful indiscretions.” Mr Hyde was in his 40s when the affair took place. Just what constitutes “youthful” to the Congressman? Incredibly, Congressman Hyde is still an elected representative for his state.

Then there is the late Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Much beloved by the members of the GOP, as a young man Senator Thurmond raped and impregnated an African American maid that worked for his family. As far as I can determine, rape has never been an example of high moral standards. The late Senator is a GOP icon and will forever be looked upon as an example of what a good Republican is.

Not all immoral acts by Republicans are perpetrated in Washington, DC. Beverly Russell was the county chairman of the Christian Coalition as well as a member of the South Carolina Republican Party’s executive committee. If you don’t recognize his name, that’s OK. You will probably recognize his step-daughter’s name. Susan Smith is the mother who drowned her two children in a lake in South Carolina in 1994. Court records in Ms Smith’s trial reveal that Mr Russell had been sexually molesting Ms Smith since she had turned fifteen. The molestation didn’t stop until just before the murders, continuing despite two suicide attempts by his step-daughter.

The Republican Party made a big deal about the possibility of homosexuals being allowed to marry and how this would destroy the institution of marriage. They were so adamant about the subject that the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay membership of the GOP, refused to endorse President Bush. It may come as a surprise to find out that the GOP has plenty to hide when it comes to gay members of their party. For example, Roy Cohn, a very famous right-wing attorney and Reagan confidante, was himself a closeted gay with a penchant for boys and booze. Mr Cohn never stopped condemning gays or fighting against gay rights. He was still fighting the day he died of AIDS.

These are just a few examples of GOP “pillars or virtue.” The next time you hear a Republican candidate or activist say that the GOP is the party of moral values and urges you to vote against the immorality of the liberals in the Democratic Party, ask yourself, “can I trust them?”

Since “moral issues” are such a deciding factor when Americans decide who they will vote for, I think it’s important that voters know a little about the party that wants their votes. The GOP has long touted itself as the “moral” party in the government. They have used words such as “sick”, “permissive attitudes”, “cheat”, and “abuse of power” to denigrate their Democratic opponents. So let’s look at a few examples of GOP “morality.”

Newt Gingrich came to power in the United States Congress by attacking the Democrats as “anti-family” and “corrupt.” Newt has been and is still one of the most influential Republicans in the history of the GOP. Mr Gingrich is such an icon of family values and morality that he has been married three times. He served his first wife with divorce papers while she was lying in a hospital recovering from cancer treatments. His second wife fared a little better. Mr Gingrich notified her of his intention to divorce her over the phone when he called to wish his mother-in-law a happy birthday. And why did Newt feel compelled to divorce wife number two? It seems that he had been having an affair with a Congressional aide, a woman that was about 20 years his junior. But all is forgiven. Newt went on to marry the young woman.

Another famous and influential conservative is radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Mr Limbaugh has had his share of morality issues recently. He’s been married numerous times, most recently to an aerobics instructor that he met on the internet. Alas, it doesn’t seem that this marriage was meant to be either, since divorce proceedings are already under way. I wonder if the most recent marital problems could be related to Rush’s admitted misuse of the drug Oxycontin. It appears that Mr Limbaugh felt compelled to have his maid procure the drugs illegally for him, since his back hurt too much to go out and buy the drugs himself. Rush has been forgiven for his misdeeds by the millions of “Dittoheads” that listen to his show every day. I guess maybe we should forgive him too.

At least Mr Limbaugh doesn’t support abortion. That’s probably more than Bob Barr, ex-Congressman from Georgia, can say. A staunch abortion opponent, Mr Barr wasn’t so strong in his opposition to the procedure when his second wife, Gail, had an abortion. Of course at the time he was having an affair with his next wife and was in the process of divorcing wife number two. No word from what wife number three thinks about Mr Barr licking whipped cream off two strippers breasts at a GOP fundraiser in 1992.

And then there is conservative writer John Fund, who voices his right-wing opinions in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. It seems that Mr Fund had an affair with the daughter of his ex-girlfriend, who was 20 years younger than he was, and impregnated her. Rather than face the fact that he was about to become a father, Mr Fund broke off his relation with the young lady, Morgan Pillsbury, and did nothing to stop her from having an abortion when he refused to support her in her time of impending motherhood. The young lady’s mother, Melinda Pillsbury-Foster has stated that Fund "has used slander, lies, and the power of his position to hide his actions from friends and the public." Maybe that’s just the conservative’s way of practicing “family values.”

In 2004 voters decided that the most important issue in the election was the moral issues facing our country today. Apparently these moral issues don’t apply to the party that received the most votes. While touting itself as the party of morality and family values, the GOP has a long list of members who are anything but moral.

Just this year two GOP Congressmen, Ed Schrock of Virginia and David Dreier of California, both vocal opponents of gay rights, have been outed as being gay. Schrock, a married ex-Navy Captain decided not to run for re-election. Dreier is still in Congress. When asked if he was in fact gay his reply was “I’m not going to answer that.” It can only be assumed that his live-in partner, Brad Smith, knows that the 52 year old batchelor is gay. But he’s not talking either.

As all good Democrats know, Dreier’s sexuality is not a choice. Sexual abuse, on the other hand, is. You may have heard of Earl “Butch” Kimmerling, the Indiana school bus driver who won praise from conservatives for fighting a gay couple’s attempt to adopt a child. Kimmerling, you see, knows something about adoption. He confessed to police in a taped interview that he had sexually molested his adopted daughter, the little girl that the gay couple wanted to adopt. She was eight years old at the time of the abuse. Family values at work, people.

Then there is the bizarre case of George Roche III, the president of conservative Hillsdale College. Mr Roche carried on a 19-year long affair with a young woman who just happened to be married to Mr Roche’s son. When the affair ended, Mrs George Roche IV killed herself behind her home on the Hillsdale College campus. Hillsdale's mission statement declares that it is "a trustee of modern man's intellectual and spiritual inheritance from the Judeo-Christian faith and Greco-Roman culture, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law." I’m not sure Mr Roche exemplifies Christian behavior.

Let’s return to Washington for a moment. Former Arkansas Senator Tim Hutchinson, a graduate of fundamentalist Bob Jones University, is a past-winner of the Christian Coalition’s Friend of the Family award. What family, we don’t really know. You see, Senator Hutchinson divorced his wife of 29 years to marry a congressional aide that he had been having an affair with.

Morality is and should be an issue when voting for a candidate that will represent your interests, either on a state, local or federal level. But every American should take what they are told with a grain of salt. Remember, these men and women are trying to get your vote. Just because they profess morality doesn’t necessarily mean the practice morality.

God forbid that gay people have the same rights as the rest of Americans. At least that’s the message that Americans sent on November 2, 2004 when they made “moral issues” the deciding factor in the elections, more important than the war in Iraq or the sluggish economy. But does the rhetoric that they have been fed by the GOP match the way their members live? Let’s see now…

I guess we can start with Matthew Glavin, the president and CEO of the Southeastern Legal Foundation. After leading the attack to have President Bill Clinton disbarred in Arkansas, running “morality” campaigns against the Clintons, leading the charge to keep gays out of the Boy Scouts and attacking Atlanta’s plans to provide same-sex benefits to the city’s employees, Mr Glavin himself was arrested in an Atlanta park for public indecency and for allegedly fondling the park officer’s crotch. Unfortunately for the married father, this wasn’t Glavin’s first arrest. He had previously been arrested for public indecency while he was on the prowl for gay sex in an Atlanta park.

Then there’s John Paulk, famous as an “ex-gay” who formed a fundamentalist group, Exodus International, to convert gays to the Godly life of straights. Mr Paulk was photographed outside a Washington DC gay club. His initial story was that he only stopped in to use the restroom. He later admitted that he had been on the prowl, apparently having fallen off the straight and narrow path that he had laid out for his constituency.

Another Exodus International poster child, Michael Johnson, was allegedly having unprotected sex with several men in Virginia Beach. This is not the smartest thing for an ex-gay advocate to be doing, especially when Johnson himself is HIV positive.

Well, you may say, these men aren’t Republicans. True Republicans would never participate in such immoral behavior. Robert Bauman, ex-Congressman from Maryland might not agree with your assumptions. Mr Bauman was outed in 1980 when he was arrested for soliciting gay sex from a sixteen year old boy. In 1983 Mr Bauman finally came out of the closet and his wife had their marriage annulled.

Another prominent GOP member is Arthur Finkelstein. Mr Finkelstein has worked for such GOP icons as Jesse Helms, the famous anti-gay Senator from North Carolina, Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and Bob Smith of New Hampshire, a staunch opponent of gay adoption. Ironically, Mr Finkelstein and his partner have two adopted kids of their own. Finkelstein has been “semi-out” in Washington DC but keeps his private life under wraps, probably because it wouldn’t look good for his anti-gay clients to be seen working with him.

Many people in America say they don’t know anyone who is gay. What they don’t realize is the fact that there are people all around them that are gay. They just don’t know it, because their gay neighbors and friends may choose not to let them know for fear of offending them or losing their friendship. Yes, Virginia, there are gays. Even in the GOP.