The search for Democrat page scandals

Newsweek's Howard Fineman reports that Republicans are desperately scrambling to find a page scandal they can throw back at Democrats:

It’s going to get uglier from here. The GOP will respond by unearthing old stories of sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill. I know that the search is on for complaints, however old, about unnamed Democrats who might have come on too strong to male or female pages.

Ah, the desperate search for moral equivalence. But set aside the cynicism of this maneuver. From a practical perspective, it's not going to work. At this point, the issue is the response of the House GOP leadership, not Foley. That means Republicans need to find a Democratic member who behaved inappropriately with a page and show that Democrats failed to deal with that member's behavior. And more than two decades later, Gerry Studds doesn't count.

Update 10/4: That was fast -- Drudge is featuring a link to Human Events' list of the "Top 10 Democrat Sex Scandals in Congress," which goes back to the 1970s.

Comments

[Seth Kramer]

What's the matter they didn't want to go all the way back to Andrew Jackson's illegitimate marriage to his wife in 1792?

[Seth]

I know this is going to sound petty and/or conspiratorial, but the right-wing has made an effort to divorce the positive feelings people have about the democratic process from the Democratic party by using the noun "Democrat" as an adjective (e.g. "The search for Democrat page scandals" or "Top 10 Democrat Sex Scandals in Congress")

The word Democrat is a noun. Is, was, and as long as Frank Luntz and his ilk do not control Merriam-Webster, always will be a noun. When an adjective is needed, the word is "Democratic".