Democrats Need To Do It For the Children:
When it comes to the real rough and tumble, down in the gutter, biting the ears off and gouging the eyes out battle that is politics, Democrats have, for most of the last thirty or so years, been a tremulous bunch. Once the word "liberal" came to mean "cocksucking whoremonger with AIDS," thanks to a particularly well-crafted long game by conservatives, Democrats spent most of their time batting down the slings and arrows as those fuckers come at them full speed from the other side. In other words, for every James Carville, there's ten Karl Rove/Lee Atwater-types. Mostly, Democrats have had to rely on people like Bob Shrum, a consultant who couldn't find his asshole if it was being reamed by a horny buffalo. (Yes, yes, we could get all weepy Joe Klein-y and bemoan the power of political consultants, but, fuck it, you play with the toys you've got.)

Now Democrats have been given a gift, on a goddamn gold platter, served up like Nero's favorite fuck boy holding a giant diamond between his thighs for the emperor at a weekend orgy. The greatest thing about this gift is that it's ever so likely that Democrats won't even have to try to mangle the spin on the Mark Foley scandal. It's metastasizing at a speed that'd make pancreatic cancer say, "Goddamn, that's fast." The first ad is already out, one by a Democratic candidate for Congress that directly addresses the Republicans' enabling of Mark Foley's masturbatory fantasies. It's from Patty Wetterling, a Minnesotan running for the House.

Her TV spot, "Crimes," is so ham-fisted, thuddingly literal, and open to charges of exaggeration that it actually obfuscates the most important thing about Wetterling: she's walked the walk and talked the talk on child exploitation and safety for years. Jesus Christ, her son was kidnapped in 1989 and has never been found. Just like the very presence of Iraq war vets running for Congress against the President who sent them there evokes more than words, so does the presence of mother and activist Patty Wetterling says everything about the Foley scandal. At this point, the media and political context takes care of almost all of the meaning.

From now until the election, any mention of the word "child" in a campaign context is automatically going to invoke Foley and the Republicans. So Democrats, if they play their cards right, can take advantage of this without directly saying, "Republicans bad - Republicans hide perverts - you don't like Republicans." See, that falls right into Karl Rove's hand and the developing meme that Democrats are in some way responsible for Foley. See this week's act of cuntistry by Ann Coulter. See all the fucktards who keep on bringing up the case of Gerry Studds, the Democrat who fucked a 17-year old male page decades ago. It's kind of like excusing Watergate because of Teapot Dome.

(By the way, regarding the Studds case, when it came out in 1983 that Studds had had sex with the page, it had been ten years since the incident and, despite what Coulter says in selectively quoting one Washington Post columnist, most people were appalled by the actions of Studds and Republican Dan Crane, who banged a female page. On July 21, 1983, here's what the lead editorial of the Post said: "[I]n engaging in sexual acts with young congressional employees entrusted to their care by parents and teachers and others who believe the congressmen will not misuse them, these men were guilty of a terrible failure of decency and responsibility. They abused their office and they abused their young wards." Ellen Goodman, no conservative bible-thumper wrote, "Congress assumed the role of surrogate parents in the lives of these pages. It behaved instead...'as errant parents.' More than two people in the Capitol forgot that teen-agers still need something special from their elders. They need protection." Studds and Crane decided not to resign, were censured by the House, and let the voters make the choice as to whether or not to expel them from office.)

Here's why one day the Democrats will send Shrum and Donna Brazile and all those idiots out to pasture where they can chew cud and moo away their last days of uselessness, and why they will call upon the Rude Pundit to show them the light and path to righteousness and endless power: Let the word go forth that Democrats are making this campaign about the children. And that can take on all kinds of guises: ending the Iraq war so that children don't, you know, die, and so children in military families can be reunited after the constant extensions of the missions of some brigades. It can be about schools and health care. And, by inference, without even mentioning their names, it can be about protecting them from Republicans like Mark Foley, like Dennis Hastert, like John Boehner, men who would chew up the children and spit them out like so much fresh meat in order to maintain power. And when Republicans bring up national security, one word, "children," will make it all meaningless. For if the children aren't safe in their bedrooms from the politicians who are supposed to protect them, why even bother with the terrorists?

See how simple that is? It always will be. And it doesn't get into the queasy politics of attack and negativity that Democrats are condemned for anyway ('cause, you know, only Republicans are allowed to run negative ads). All smiles and positivity and inference, man, just inference and evocation. ''Cause let's say two people have been given that bright, shiny jewel as a present. Who are you gonna respect more? The one who dresses it up with more gold and silver and calls glaring attention to it? Or the one who puts it on a chain and just lets it hang there?