1) that he frequented sex clubs isn’t so much a scandal as much as hiding it for months and then fudging. Today on 848–linked to below, he says he something like three places that made her uncomfortable. It isn’t the action as much as trying to hide it. Now he is pretty much admitting something along those lines occurred.
2) the issue is a GOP issue. One, by dragging this out, he has wasted a ton of time to get the voters to know him. Two, he lied to party leaders. They don’t take kindly to that. As I said in a private e-mail earlier–he isn’t going to have to watch his back, the GOP mob will be coming at him from the front.
3) Why are they mad? Remember, no one expects this guy to win, they wanted a reasonable attractive candidate to motivate the party faithful to show up on election day. mentioned previously
and
If had had lived through the primary with this information then the GOP could reasonably say it has been dealt with. Not now.
4) The guy is just friggen stupid. When Rod McCulloch made the charges public in March who the hell wouldn’t know the file would come out? If not by the Court than by whomever was passing around the file? Ryan knew McCulloch had seen an accurate file. This is a colossally stupid blunder.
5) He will never get on message now. The reporters will keep asking until they get answers he isn’t going to say and they are going to treat him like a hostile witness.
Up here the thinking was that he was so pretty that he’d get the women to the polls to vote for Bush. Which is the same thinking that had them admiring Bush’s package in a jump suit. Never say they don’t think about sex all the time.
Amy: what on earth are you talking about? Do you know something I don’t? I’ve heard nothing regarding these highly explosive allegations you’ve mentioned…
LOL–well, you know guys are a bit slow.
Ken–don’t feed the trolls. It’s an AOL troll so banning IPs only does so much good.
Sorry about that, AP. I didn’t realize.
not a biggee–it’ll just look like you are talking to yourself 😉
That Amy that’s mentioned on here…would that be, by any chance, St. Louis Ann Coulter-wannabe Amy White? Just curiouis.
If so, she picked the wrong blog to troll, I’ll say that.
If it’s not, my apologies.
No, Amy White can write coherently. The Illinois blog troll cannot.
The revelations in the Jack! files are an interesting contrast to all the re-hashing of the Clinton impeachment proceeding that’s happening all over the national media.
Both guys did essentially the same thing (lie about a sexual incident) for roughly the same reasons (avoid embarassment and political scandal). And both politicians mishandled the issue by not coming clean early.
But there’s another big difference here. Clinton had a long record of public service; we knew what kind of President he was. Even in the 1992 election, we had a pretty good idea of what direction he’d take the country.
Jack!, on the other hand, has no record as a public official. On top of that, he hasn’t really offered anything innovative, new, or refreshing in this campaign — just the same GOP claptrap.
What he did offer was an intriguing biography: a millionaire who retired to teach in the inner city. He hit us over the head with that theme. His TV ads ended with him entering a classroom. Many of his staged campaign appearances included former students. In the end, the meesage of Jack!’s campaign was “Vote for Jack! because he’s a great guy.”
Since he offers nothing else but his exceptional character, the revelations in his divorce files are going to hit him particularly hard.
Clinton survived his sex scandal precisely because he never based his Presidency on being a person of exceptional moral character. He based it on solid achievements: welfare reform; global trade agreements; community policing; taming the deficit. Even so, when he admitted lying about Lewinsky, my opinion of him fell. He was still a good President, but a lousy human being.
Now that we know Jack! is not a great human being, what’s he got left? He offers nothing, and ultimately that’s the problem — and would be a problem even if his opponent wasn’t one of the most thoughtful politicians in the country.