October Surprises

I don't think much analysis is needed about the events of the last week. We are watching a full scale implosion of the majority party. Just two years ago Rove's dreams of making Republicans a permanent majority seemed all but inevitable. But the electorate is fickle; they treated Social Security "Reform" like it was the bubonic plague. Bush's base revolted over Harriet Miers. The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan deteriorated sharply. And then Katrina.

Katrina highlighted the incompentency and neglect of the Bush Administration. The drowning of a beloved American city was harder to ignore than the slow motion disaster of Iraq. Foley-gate is this year's Katrina, but for the House of Representatives (they're on the ballot this year - not Bush - another reason for this scandal to sting) It's a more sensational picture of decadence than a million Duke Cunninghams. Oh, yeah, and when Foley isn't the headline, it's Bob Woodward and his new book, State of Denial. The Republicans have tons of dough, and the electorate is always fickle, but this looks like a tipping point to me.

At the very least, this scandal has provided great quotes.

MSNBC's David Schuster on Hardball:

"Every Republican that we spoke to today said this has almost guaranteed that the Republicans are not going to keep control of Congress."

Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn):

"I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator."

Chris Matthews:

"This is a stink bomb of high megatonage, I think you‘d agree."

"You know, Chuck, it reminded me of Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove.” He starts talking about precious bodily fluids as the cause for the world‘s problems. What is this talk about George Soros in the middle of a sex scandal in the House?"

Nancy Pelosi:

"Drain the swamp."

Paul Begala:

"Most normal people, even political people, react to this like moms and dads. I’m a dad. Somebody sends an email like that to my kid, they are going to deal with the law firm of Smith & Wesson, OK? It ain’t going to go to no Page Board."

Keith Olbermann was trembling as he lashed out at President Bush last night:

"While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ... The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’”

The hell they did.

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow . . .

Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads—around him and before him—darkness, like some contagion of fear.

They are never wrong, and they never regret -- admirable in a French torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader.

Mr. President, you want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it . . . Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics."

Even former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough piled on:

"From the White House to Capitol Hill, where late-breaking news in the Foley firestorm with new developments in a sex scandal that will bring a lurid end to the Republican Party‘s 12-year monopoly on Capitol Hill.

The explosive new charges have all but eclipsed Speaker Denny Hastert‘s press conference where the embattled GOP head refused to step down. Hastert said he accepted responsibility, but only after telling “The Chicago Tribune” earlier that the GOP sex scandal was the blame of ABC News, the Democratic Party and George Soros.

Harry Truman, Mr. Hastert is not."