As the former page was exchanging suggestive comments with the 52-year-old Congressman on Instant Messenger, the boy suddenly wrote, “my mom is yelling.” He had to go do his homework, a book report for English class.
That’s it, right there. That’s why Americans are so outraged about the failure of the House Republican leadership to prevent Rep. Mark Foley from preying on the youngsters who work in the Capitol. These are kids. The adults who run Congress are supposed to protect them, not exploit them, and they failed miserably.
This is not just one more scandal about consenting adults behaving badly over money or sex, or one more untidy “mess” about “naughty e-mails,” as White House press spokesman Tony Snow so stupidly described it. This one has really touched a nerve among American parents, and that’s why it could jeopardize Republican control of the Congress this fall.
Sample the comments on the Web site of ABC, which broke the story, and you understand the passions that have been stirred up. “I’ve been a Republican all my life and so has been my family for generations,” wrote NRALover. “The GOP knew for years and did nothing to protect our children ... heaven forbid we leave these (expletive) in control any longer.”
It’s unlikely that NRALover or other devout Republicans will vote Democratic. But since some are already demoralized by rising deficits in Washington and body counts in Iraq, it is possible they will stay home, and that’s what has GOP strategists so alarmed. The church busses can be ready to roll on Election Day, but if nobody gets on board, Republicans lose a key advantage.
As Joe Gaylord, a long-time adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, told The Washington Post: “The part that causes the greatest fallout is the obvious kind of pall that an incident like this would put on our hardest-core voters, who are evangelical Christians. ... This is one more nail in that coffin.”
Republicans, of all people, should have understood the volatility of this issue. They won the last two elections in large part because they convinced parents – particularly moms – that they would do a better of job of keeping their children safe. No issue engages the emotions of a mother more than the welfare of her kids.
In the off year elections of 2002, 53 percent of married moms backed Republicans.
In 2004, 56 percent of them supported President Bush. That’s why, overall, women favored John Kerry by only three points, a sharp drop from Bill Clinton’s edge of 16 points in 1996. And since Democrats can only win elections with a sizeable margin among female voters, the defection of the “mommy vote” sealed Kerry’s doom.
