Justin's Political Corner
Things go wrong in government. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. Sometimes it’s rank incompetence. Sometimes it’s criminal wrongdoing. Most of the time you never hear about it. Or, if you do hear about it, the media eventually gets bored talking about it (see warming, global).
But every so often an instance of government wrongdoing sprouts wings and becomes something quite exciting: A political scandal.
The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of high-level White House involvement and wide political repercussions. Government wrongdoing is boring. Scandals can bring down presidents, decide elections and revive down-and-out political parties. Scandals can dominate American politics for months at a time.
On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing. Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out. There’ll be more hearings, and more bad press for the Obama administration, and more demands for documents. But — and this is a key qualification — absent more revelations, the scandals that could reach high don’t seem to include any real wrongdoing, whereas the ones that include real wrongdoing don’t reach high enough.
1) The Internal Revenue Service: The IRS mess was, well, a mess. But it’s not a mess that implicates the White House, or even senior IRS leadership. If we believe the agency inspector general’s report, a group of employees in a division called the “Determinations Unit” — sounds sinister, doesn’t it? — started giving tea party groups extra scrutiny, were told by agency leadership to knock it off, started doing it again, and then were reined in a second time and told that any further changes to the screening criteria needed to be approved at the highest levels of the agency.
The White House fired the acting director of the agency on the theory that somebody had to be fired and he was about the only guy they had the power to fire. They’re also instructing the IRS to implement each and every one of the IG’s recommendations to make sure this never happens again.
If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.
2) Benghazi: We’re long past the point where it’s obvious what the Benghazi scandal is supposed to be about. The inquiry has moved on from the events in Benghazi proper, tragic as they were, to the talking points about the events in Benghazi. And the release Wednesday night of 100 pages of internal e-mails on those talking points seems to show what my colleague Glenn Kessler suspected: This was a bureaucratic knife fight between the State Department and the CIA.
As for the White House’s role, well, the e-mails suggest there wasn’t much of one. “The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago,” report The Washington Post’s Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung. As for why the talking points seemed to blame protesters rather than terrorists for the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans? Well:
According to the e-mails and initial CIA-drafted talking points, the agency believed the attack included a mix of Islamist extremists from Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, and angry demonstrators.
White House officials did not challenge that analysis, the e-mails show, nor did they object to its inclusion in the public talking points.
But CIA deputy director Michael Morell later removed the reference to Ansar al-Sharia because the assessment was still classified and because FBI officials believed that making the information public could compromise their investigation, said senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal debate.
So far, it’s hard to see what, exactly, the scandal here is supposed to be.
3) AP/Justice Department:. This is the weirdest of the three. There’s no evidence that the DoJ did anything illegal. Most people, in fact, think it was well within its rights to seize the phone records of Associated Press reporters. And if the Obama administration has been overzealous in prosecuting leakers, well, the GOP has been arguing that the White House hasn’t taken national security leaks seriously enough. The AP/DoJ fight has caused that position to flip, and now members of Congress are concerned that the DoJ is going after leaks too aggressively. But it’s hard for a political party to prosecute wrongdoing when they disagree with the potential remedies.
Insofar as there’s a “scandal” here, it’s more about what is legal than what isn’t. The DoJ simply has extraordinary power, under existing law, to spy on ordinary citizens — members of the media included. The White House is trying to change existing law by encouraging Sen. Chuck Schumer to reintroduce the Media Shield Act. The Post’s Rachel Weiner has a good rundown of what the bill would do. It’s likely that the measure’s national security exemption would make it relatively toothless in this particular case, but if Congress is worried, they always can — and probably should — take that language out. Still, that legislation has been killed by Republicans before, and it’s likely to be killed by them again.
The scandal metanarrative itself is also changing. Because there was no actual evidence of presidential involvement in these events, the line for much of this week was that the president was not involved enough in their aftermath. He was “passive.” He seemed to be a “bystander.” His was being controlled by events, rather than controlling them himself.
And yet, even if the scandals fade, the underlying problems might remain. The IRS. could give its agents better and clearer guidance on designating 501(c)(4), but Congress needs to decide whether that status and all of its benefits should be open to political groups or not. The Media Shield Act is not likely to go anywhere, and even if it does, it doesn’t get us anywhere close to grappling with the post-9/11 expansion of the surveillance state. And then, of course, there are all the other problems Congress is ignoring, from high unemployment to sequestration to global warming. When future generations look back on the scandals of our age, it’ll be the unchecked rise in global temperatures, not the Benghazi talking points, that infuriate them.
One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is.
WASHINGTON — The House Ethics Committee said Wednesday it will continue an investigation of Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock over allegations he solicited donations of more than $5,000 per donor to a super political action committee. The committee also said it’s continuing a probe of whether a trip New York Democrat Bill Owens took to Taiwan was arranged by lobbyists for the country’s government.
Both cases had been referred to the House committee by the Office of Congressional Ethics, a separate, outside ethics office. The House committee announced its decision to continue looking into each case on Wednesday, while releasing OCE’s report on both cases.
In a statement, the ethics committee said that in both cases merely “conducting further review … does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the committee.” The committee also said it would refrain from further comment pending completion of initial reviews.
Both Schock and Owens said they expect to be exonerated by the House committee.
Schock’s case involves an allegation he asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., to contribute $25,000 from his leadership PAC to a super PAC that backed Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., in a House primary against Rep. Don Manzullo. Kinzinger won the March 2012 primary. Redistricting following the 2010 census put the two congressmen in the same and the primary.
According to the OCE report, the Super PAC backing Kinzinger, the Campaign for Primary Accountability, received a minimum of $115,000 that came from “efforts of Rep. Schock and his campaign committee.”
Schock told investigators that he never requested the $25,000 from Cantor. According to the OCE report, Cantor told investigators that Schock had asked him if he would give the $25,000 donation to back Kinzinger. Cantor said he then gave money from his committee to the super PAC backing Kinziger in the primary.
The case involving Owens relates to a December 2011 trip he and his wife took to Taiwan. Owens and his wife were invited by the Chinese Culture University of Taiwan. But the trip may have been arranged by lobbyists for the country. Lawmakers are prohibited from taking trips that are paid for by lobbyists.
Owens said he expected the investigation would clear him of wrongdoing.
H/T: Huffington Post
Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker transferred another $40,000 into his criminal defense fund on the final day of the 2012 calendar year.
This latest transfer of money has raised more eyebrows about the ongoing “John Doe” investigation in Wisconsin, in which Darlene Wink, Kevin Kavanaugh, Kelly Rindfleisch, and Tim Russell, all former political confidants of Walker, have either been convicted or have plead guilty as part of the John Doe probe.
Scott Walker himself has yet to be charged with any wrongdoing, however, he has a criminal defense fund, he has NOT been cleared of any wrongdoing, and he has NOT been granted immunity in the John Doe probe. Wisconsin state law only allows the incumbent governor to establish a criminal defense fund if the governor, one or more agent(s) of the governor, or someone who is dependent upon the governor and/or one or more agent(s) of the governor, is a target of a criminal investigation, has been indicted, or has been convicted.
h/t: BlueDownstate
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, a Democrat and the only announced candidate for governor in 2014, admitted Tuesday that he had an inappropriate relationship with a Hot Springs attorney after court documents were filed alleging they had a sexual affair.
McDaniel, who has been married since June 2009, said he had a relationship with Andrea L. Davis, but would not offer details.
McDaniel announced in June that he would run for governor in 2014, and has already raised more than $1 million for his bid. Tricia Wallace, a spokeswoman for McDaniel, said he did not plan to drop out of the race due to Tuesday’s admission.
McDaniel was first elected attorney general in 2006 and was re-elected in 2010 without any major party opposition.
The admission is a major setback for Democrats, who had hoped to rebound from an election this year where Republicans won control of thestate Legislature for the first time in 138 years. The state GOP had targeted the governor’s race and Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor’s re-election bid as their top prizes in two years.
Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe is term-limited and cannot run for re-election in 2014.
Republicans stopped short of criticizing McDaniel, but indicated they viewed it as an issue in the governor’s race.
“This is just another factor the voters of Arkansas will have to consider as they look to choose their next governor,” state GOP spokeswoman Katherine Vasilos said.
Potential rivals also held off on criticizing McDaniel directly over the relationship.
“That’s something he’ll deal with with his family. I don’t really have a response,” said Republican state Sen. Johnny Key, who is considering a run for governor in two years.
McDaniel’s campaign last week claimed its internal polling shows the attorney general could defeat former Lt. Gov. Bill Halter or highway commissioner John Burkhalter for the Democratic nomination in 2014, and that a general election race against Republican Asa Hutchinson would be closer.
H/T: TheRepublic.com
* Down in the polls and apparently fed up with being belittled, Jason Plummer’s campaign first resorted to attacking Bill Enyart’s son and has now moved on to attacking Enyart’s wife in a press release that’s literally chock full of glaring mistakes.
While seniors and working families in Southern Illinois are left in limbo about the future of the pensions they earned, millionaire trial lawyer Bill Enyart and his family continue to enrich themselves on the taxpayer’s dime.
Enyart, who served as a political advisor to convicted felon Rod Blagojevich and Governor Quinn, and his wife Annette currently collect three taxpayer-funded pensions that pay more than $156,000 each year. With his household in line to receive at least four more taxpayer-funded pensions, how much more will Enyart collect off the backs of the taxpayers?
If elected, the Enyarts would add an eighth pension to their collection. This begs the question: Is he running to enrich himself or the lives of Southern Illinois families?
Despite those breathless allegations, Plummer’s own research shows that Bill Enyart isn’t collecting a single pension. Yes, you read that right.Go look for yourself.
* While the press release isn’t so explicit, this attack is purely about Enyart’s wife, Annette Eckert. And Plummer’s own research on her doesn’t even support Plummer’s attack.
For instance, this is one of the “pensions” that Ms. Eckert is supposedly receiving…
That ain’t a “pension.” That’s a one-time death benefit payout from her own mother, for crying out loud.
* And if you look at the Plummer research, the number of actual pensions being collected doesn’t equal seven, it equals three. And two of those are pretty small. Click for a larger view…
* Back to the press release…
Much of Illinois’ dire financial situation is due to pension abuse, and Enyart’s insider dealings show how Illinois’ pension system has been corrupted. Two of the pensions that he collects come from positions that lasted a total of 14 and 19 months, respectively.
Again, Enyart is not collecting those pensions. Plummer’s own research shows that Enyart’s wife is collecting those monthly payouts.
Argue what you want about whether or not Enyart’s wife should be receiving those two pensions. The monthly payouts do look a bit excessive for the time employed, even if they are small.
* But, really, that’s neither here nor there. Plummer’s press release comes nowhere near to matching Plummer’s actual research. This is a totally bogus release. Period. End of story.
To sum up: Plummer’s research shows three pensions for Enyart’s wife (one big, two small), but Plummer’s press release claims the couple is collecting seven pensions and that Enyart himself is collecting two, when Enyart is actually not collecting any.
H/T: CapitolFax.com
Mitt Romney LIED under oath when he testified in the divorce of his good friend and screwed the friend’s wife out of a lot of money in the process … so claims the ex-wife of Staples’ founder Tom Stemberg.
Multiple sources connected with the divorce tell TMZ … during Tom’s uber nasty divorce case with ex-wife Maureen, Mitt Romney gave a deposition and testified during the trial that Staples was worth virtually nothing. Romney testified that the company was worth very little and Tom was a dreamer and “the dream continues.”
Romney characterized the Staples stock as “overvalued,” adding, “I didn’t place a great deal of credibility in the forecast of the company’s future.”
Partly as a result of Romney’s testimony, Maureen got relatively little in the divorce, but we’re told just weeks after the divorce ended, Romney and Tom went to Goldman Sachs and cashed in THEIR stock for a fortune. Short story — Romney allegedly lied to help his friend and screw the friend’s wife over.
And there’s more … Our sources say years later, Maureen, who suffered from MS and had multiple bouts with cancer, got a visit from one of Tom’s guys, who gave her papers informing her that Tom was cancelling her health insurance. Our sources say the irony here is that we’re told Tom was working as one of then Governor Mitt Romney’s chief health care advisers.
H/T: TMZ.com
On the heels of a sex scandal, Dinesh D’Souza announced his resignation today as president of King’s College in New York. D’Souza, star of the nonsensical anti-Obama film 2016: Obama’s America and defender of traditional marriage, was recently caught cavorting with a much younger woman while still married to his wife. And now to make matters worse, it appears that his mistress was also married.
Last week, D’Souza blasted President Obama for undermining traditional values. Now we know D’Souza is so traditional that his love life comes straight out of the Old Testament.D’Souza, who told Christianity Today that “he did not know that Christians generally do not approve of engagements prior to divorces being finalized,” is engaged to Denise Odie Joseph II (sic) and married to his wife. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, apparently.Denise Odie Joseph II was known as Denise Odie back in 2010 when she was in law school. She created a new Facebook account on December 30, 2011 under the name Denise Odie Joseph II and said she got married that day:Two days later, she posted a photo of herself with her husband:On her blog – entitled “I, Denise, Lust After…” – she described herself as Mrs. Odie Joseph in April 2012 and wrote this about her husband in May:While some of us are still nursing heartbreak over Santorum’s defeat or the great Doctor’s Man of La Mancha campaign, unfortunately for you WAPO, we on the Right have already rallied around a man we’ll make, with however many misgivings, our guy. I was already going to vote for Romney because my husband told me to.Back on January 1, 2012, shortly after her wedding, she wrote about all the gifts that her new husband had given to her:Beau gifts Belle box of beautifully wrapped stockings (or any gift no matter the cost), Belle smiles demurely, sighs with satisfaction at the thought of Beau knowing her so well, and kisses Beau with magnanimous, passionate gratitudeD’Souza may have lost his ridiculous 7-figure King’s College salary, but at least now he has a mate who shares his deeply held hypocrisy and fluid, self-serving morality. This could be the start of something big….
After a marathon meeting to decide his fate, the board of trustees of The King’s College, a small evangelical school based in Manhattan, announced Thursday that conservative author Dinesh D’Souza had resigned as president. Former president and current chairman Andy Mills, who made the announcement to faculty and staff, will return as interim president for a third time.
D’Souza came under fire Tuesday when World magazine revealed that he was engaged to a 29-year-old woman while still married to his wife of 20 years. D’Souza and Denise Odie Joseph allegedly shared a hotel room at a Christian conference in September, and D’Souza introduced her as his fiancee.
It was not immediately clear whether the board’s decision was driven by the allegations of the affair, or by dissatisfaction with D’Souza’s leadership that had been building at the college for months. At the meeting Thursday, Mills did not give details of the board’s conversation about D’Souza or give reasons for his departure. Representatives for the college did not respond to requests for comment.
According to several sources at the college, members of the King’s faculty and board alike had grown hostile to D’Souza’s presidency over what they saw as a failure to earn his reported million-dollar salary. D’Souza has spent much of the past few months promoting his documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, and his high profile in the media was seen as rarely benefitting the college.
h/t: The Daily Beast
The Republican Party wasn’t always synonymous with far-right Christian fundamentalism. The late five-term Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who was considered the epitome of an arch-conservative when he ran for president against Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, had no use for the Religious Right. Goldwater famously said that “the Religious Right scares the hell out of me,” and he said of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, “All good Christians should kick him in the ass.”
It isn’t that Goldwater abandoned right-wing ideas and became passionately liberal/progressive; rather, the Republican Party moved way to the right of him on social issues. From the early 1980s on, the GOP has pushed an agenda of militant social conservatism—and the more the GOP became the party of far-right Christian fundamentalism, the more Republican politicians and the evangelists who supported them became involved in major sex scandals.
Of course, the Democratic Party has had plenty of sex scandals as well. But most of the Democrats who have become involved in major sex scandals (Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, Gary Hart, among others) had not marketed themselves as extreme moralists. Post-1970s Republicans, all too often, have been self-righteous, preachy, overbearing, holier-than-thou witch hunters—and in many cases, the ones who screamed the loudest about how godly they were turned out to be the exact opposite.1. Jimmy Swaggart
Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who is a cousin of rock-and-roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley, was preaching fire-and-brimstone Christian fundamentalism before the 1980s; his television program started in 1975. But it was during the 1980s that Swaggart rose to prominence in right-wing politics and, along with Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. James Robison and Rev. Pat Robertson, greatly influenced the Christian Right’s influence on the GOP. Swaggart’s sermons are as political as they are religious, and he has never been shy about describing feminists, liberals, Democrats and rock musicians as agents of Satan who promote immorality at every turn. But in 1988, it was revealed that the adulterous Swaggart had been cheating on his wife with a New Orleans prostitute named Debra Murphree. And his association with prostitutes did not end after his famous “I have sinned” speech of 1988. In 1991, Swaggart was with prostitute Rosemary Garcia when he was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol; Garcia said Swaggart had asked her for sex. On top of all that, Swaggart has admitted to having a long history of porn consumption (even though he has often called for tougher enforcement of obscenity laws). And he appears to have dabbled in something else Christian fundamentalists condemn: BDSM. In a 1989 Penthouse interview, a woman named Catherine Campen said that when she was having an affair with Swaggart, he asked her to beat him with a riding crop.
2. Laura Schlessinger
Although America’s Religious Right has been dominated by Protestant fundamentalists, not all far-right culture warriors are Pentecostals or Southern Baptists. For example, talk radio host Laura Schlessinger, a.k.a. Dr. Laura, was a convert to Orthodox Judaism (before renouncing it in 2003), and she has made a career out of railing against sex education, abortion, premarital sex, porn, feminism and homosexuality (the gay-bashing Schlessinger once said that “a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys”). But for all her moralizing, Schlessinger hasn’t always acted like a Puritan; in the late 1990s, some nude and topless photos she had posed for in the mid-1970s were published on the Internet. The photos were taken by the late radio shock-jock Bill Balance, who sold them to an adult Web site. Schlessinger filed a lawsuit for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement, but a court ruled that the photos were not her intellectual property. Schlessinger’s “queen of family values” routine is also laughable considering that when her mother died in 2002, it was widely reported that Dr. Laura hadn’t spoken to her since 1986.
3. Newt Gingrich
In 1998, President Bill Clinton was lambasted by a long list of Republicans when it was revealed that he had cheated on his wife, Hillary Clinton, with intern Monica Lewinsky. One of his loudest critics was House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich (who asserted that Clinton showed “a level of disrespect and decadence that should appall every American”). But while Gingrich was lambasting Clinton for committing adultery and trying to get him impeached, he was also cheating on his second wife, Marianne Ginther, with a woman (Callista Bisek, who became his third wife) who was 20 years younger. And that wasn’t the first time Gingrich committed adultery. In the early 1980s, Gingrich cheated on his first wife, Jackie Battley, with Ginther—and when Battley was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery, Gingrich insisted on discussing the terms of their divorce. After that, Mr. Family Values refused to pay Battley either alimony or child support (a local church took up a collection to help her out financially). Despite his history of serial adultery, Gingrich had no problem playing the “family values” card during his recent bid for the GOP presidential nomination.4. David Vitter
Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana is infamous for his extreme social conservatism and for pandering to the Christian Right. Vitter has supported a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage nationwide (although he claims to support “states rights,” Vitter makes an exception when it comes to gay marriage), promoted abstinence-only sex education, called for school board meetings in Louisiana to open with prayers, and repeatedly preached against abortion. Vitter loves to play the red state/blue state card, saying that he represents socially conservative “Louisiana values” rather than secular “Massachusetts values.” But in 2007, it was revealed that Vitter had been a client of the Washington, DC escort service operated by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a.k.a. the DC Madam; Vitter admitted he had cheated on his wife with a prostitute, but no criminal charges were filed because of the statute of limitations. Despite his blatant hypocrisy, Vitter was re-elected to the Senate in 2010.
5. Rush Limbaugh
“The Rush Limbaugh Show” has always been full of sexual contradictions. On one hand, the far-right talk radio host has a long history of supporting the Christian Right and telling his audience that the Republican Party is the true voice of morality in the United States. On the other hand, the twice-divorced Limbaugh is quite fond of off-color humor (“PMSNBC” is his name for MSNBC) and sexual innuendos. Limbaugh will use sex to boost ratings at the same time he’s preaching God, family values and morality to the GOP base. Limbaugh’s schizophrenic relationship with sex was recently exemplified by his heavily publicized attack on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, whom he denounced as a “slut” and a “prostitute” for saying that health insurance plans should cover female contraception. Limbaugh said that if other people were going to pay for Fluke to have sex, she should film the sexual act for his viewing pleasure. In other words, he was asking Fluke to make a porn video, which is ironic in light of how much time Republicans have spent railing against the adult entertainment industry. Limbaugh’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there; previous Limbaugh scandals have ranged from his well-documented addiction to painkillers in 2003 to being detained for three hours at the Palm Beach Airport in 2006 for possessing a bottle of Viagra that wasn’t in his name.6. Larry Craig
During the many years he spent in Congress (18 years in the Senate preceded by 10 years in the House of Representatives), Republican Larry Craig of Idaho was a strident social conservative with a very anti-gay record. Craig opposed gay men serving in the U.S. military, and he favored adding an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have outlawed same-sex marriage nationwide. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group that rates politicians’ voting records on gay issues, gave Craig a rating of 0 in 2004. But in June 2007, the married Craig was arrested for lewd conduct in a men’s room stall at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport; an undercover police officer said that Craig’s behavior indicated he was seeking a sexual encounter (Craig pled guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct). And in December 2007, no less than eight gay men alleged to the Idaho Statesman that they had either had sexual affairs with Craig or that he had made sexual advances to them.
7. Ted Haggard
Evangelical minister Ted Haggard has never been known for embracing a moderate approach to Protestant Christianity. Very much a fundamentalist, Haggard was a strong supporter of George W. Bush’s presidency and did a lot to rally GOP “values voters” in 2004. Haggard has been quite the culture warrior, loudly preaching against abortion, premarital sex, adultery and gay marriage. But in 2006, a male escort named Mike Jones revealed that the married Haggard had been a client; in addition to paying for sex and committing adultery, Jones said, Haggard was fond of using crystal meth. Admitting to his followers that he was guilty of “sexual immorality,” Jones resigned from his position with the National Association of Evangelicals.9. Jim Bakker
Jimmy Swaggart was not the first right-wing Pentecostal televangelist to be involved in a major sex scandal. In 1987, Jim Bakker (who co-hosted “The PTL Club” with his wife, Tammy Faye Bakker) was disgraced when it came out that he had cheated on his wife with church secretary Jessica Hahn and paid her $265,000 to keep quiet. In 1989, Bakker was convicted of fraud and racketeering charges in a federal court and sentenced to 45 years in prison and a $500,000 fine, but he was granted parole in 1994. Swaggart, ironically, was vehemently critical of Bakker in 1987, calling him “a cancer on the body of Christ” because of his affair with Hahn—and all the while, Swaggart was every bit the adulterer himself.1. John Ensign
During the years he represented Nevada in the U.S. Senate (and before that, the House of Representatives), Republican John Ensign was held in high regard by the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family and other Christian Right theocrats. Staunchly anti-abortion, he was a Pentecostal who considered himself “born again.” He voted in favor of a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and he was active in the Promise Keepers. The Christian Coalition gave him a 100% rating in 2003, while the Human Rights Campaign gave him a rating of only 11% in 2006. Like many other Republicans, Ensign called for Bill Clinton’s resignation in 1998, saying that an adulterer was unfit to be president. But as much as Ensign liked to talk about the sanctity of marriage, he didn’t practice what he preached; Ensign ended up resigning from the Senate in 2011 because of the scandal surrounding his adulterous affair with Cynthia Hampton, the wife of Douglas Hampton, an administrative aid in Ensign’s office and a close personal friend.12. Michael D. Duvall
As a member of the California State Assembly, Republican Michael D. Duvall had a reputation for being an outspoken social conservative. Duvall opposed abortion as much as he opposed gay marriage, and he insisted that heterosexual marriage had to be protected because it was the backbone of America. But in 2009, Duvall not only admitted to cheating on his wife, he bragged about it. During a lull in an appropriations committee meeting, Duvall told fellow California State Assembly member Jeff Miller that he had been cheating on his wife with two different women (one of them a lobbyist). Duvall didn’t realize that a microphone was picking up the conversation, and his comments, some of which were quite graphic, became a matter of public record. For someone who loved to paint himself as a staunch moralist, Duvall certainly took a great deal of pride in committing adultery. Duvall resigned from the California State Assembly the day after the story broke.
14. Tony Alamo
In the 1970s, evangelist/cult leader Tony Alamo, a.k.a. Bernie Lazar Hoffman and his wife Susan made a name for themselves in evangelical circles preaching a far-right version of fire-and-brimstone fundamentalism. But in the ’80s, Alamo’s behavior became so bizarre that much of the Christian Right distanced itself from him. After his wife’s death from cancer in 1982, Alamo put her embalmed body on display for months and insisted that when his congregation raised her from the dead, she would tell them when Jesus Christ would return to Earth. Also around that time Alamo began publishing his conspiracy theories involving the Catholic Church (which he considered “the Great Whore of Babylon” and believed was controlling the Soviet Union, Islamic terrorists and the Reagan Administration all at the same time). Initially, Alamo was a Ronald Reagan supporter, although he turned against Reagan when he decided that his administration was pro-Vatican. The worst, however, was yet to come. In 2009, Alamo was sentenced to 175 years in prison on a long list of charges that included sexual abuse and transporting underage girls across state lines for sexual purposes. Alamo’s ex-followers testified in court that he was guilty of numerous acts of pedophilia, including taking an eight-year-old girl to be his “wife” and having sex with her. Despite a mountain of damning evidence, the sociopathic Alamo has maintained that he is innocent of all the charges he was convicted of and insists that he was framed by the Vatican.16. Mark Sanford
These days, the Christian Right has so much influence in the Republican Party that it is next to impossible to become the Republican governor of a southern Bible Belt state if one isn’t a social conservative. Mark Sanford had a socially conservative record during his years as governor of South Carolina (he was elected in 2002) and before that, a member of the House of Representatives. He opposed abortion and gay marriage, voted to impeach Bill Clinton, and described Clinton’s actions during the Lewinsky scandal as “reprehensible.” Sanford, however, became involved in a scandal of his own when, in 2009, it was revealed that he had been cheating on his wife with a woman from Argentina named María Belén Chapur (whom he had met in Uruguay in 2001). Sanford was censured by the South Carolina House Judiciary Committee for his misuse of state travel funds.18. Mark Foley
Florida Republican Mark Foley served in the House of Representatives from 1995-2006, during which time he had a reputation for being socially conservative even though he wasn’t quite as conservative as some of his fellow Republicans would have liked. In 2003, Foley received an 84% rating from the Christian Coalition, which was lower than the 100% rating John Ensign received that year but much higher than most Democrats typically received from that organization. And his voting record was generally anti-gay, which was ironic in view of the fact that, in 2006, he got caught up in a gay sex scandal involving teenage male congressional pages. Foley, who had been sending the pages sexually explicit emails, resigned from Congress.
19. Roy Ashburn
Republican Roy Ashburn had a very anti-gay voting record when he served in the California State Senate from 2002-2010; he organized rallies opposing gay marriage, and he voted against having a day in remembrance of the slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk. In 2010, however, Ashburn was arrested for DUI after leaving a gay nightclub in Sacramento. Ashburn announced that he was gay, and gay activists pointed to his anti-gay voting record as a classic example of self-hatred.
