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The GOP's Sex Scandal Dodge
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Sen. David Vitter’s career seemed finished after his brush with the D.C. Madam, but his new ploy to provoke the Obama-hating town-hall mobs just might get him reelected.
While Democratic members of Congress confront indignant town-hall crowds opposed to President Barack Obama’s health-care policies, Republican Sen. David Vitter is enjoying a Louisiana love fest. Vitter is barnstorming through the Bayou backwoods, hosting town-halls meetings before packed houses of ferociously anti-Obama audiences. They come to praise rather than shout. Billed as public forums to discuss Obama’s health-care proposals, or what Vitter has derisively referred to as “Obamacare,” the pre-screened events appear to be functioning effectively as surrogate campaign rallies for the scandal-scarred senator’s 2010 reelection bid.
“Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” David Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation.
On August 8, inside a chapel at conservative Louisiana Baptist College in the rural town of Pineville, an evangelical minister reportedly saluted Vitter before a packed house for “doing God’s work.” When Vitter took the stage, he mocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s concerns about those she referred to in an op-ed as “angry mobs” disrupting meetings across the country.
"Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation. In the back of the chapel, an elderly woman waved a placard reading, “Send Obama & congress back to USSR.”
Vitter earned even more enthusiastic cheers with a not-so-subtle appeal to “states’ rights.” When an audience member asked him if Louisiana could withdraw from Obama’s health-care plan if it passed, Vitter proclaimed, “The first thing we need to do is elect members of Congress who respect the Tenth Amendment.”
Invocations of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” to the “states respectively, or to the people,” have become common among secessionists seeking a veneer of constitutional legitimacy. Texas Gov. Rick Perry stoked a national controversy in April when he endorsed a non-binding resolution in the state legislature supporting the Tenth Amendment’s supposed guarantee of “states’ rights,” then warned that Texans were so fed up with the federal government the state might secede. With Vitter’s recent exhortation, the far-right fringe has gained another ally within the Republican mainstream.
Unlike his Democratic colleagues who take all comers at their town halls, Vitter has sought to enforce a strict code of message control. According to a citizen journalist attending the August 8 Vitter town hall, “No one was allowed to spontaneously address the podium. There were no questions read that presented anything other than Vitter’s view and those who spoke with him. … Vitter was said to have no time to answer questions from the press.” Indeed, Vitter only responded to questions that were written on cards by audience members and screened in advance by his staffers.
Many of those attending Vitter’s town halls have been shepherded to the events by local chapters of TeaPartyPatriots.org, a supposedly grassroots network of national activists that happens to “partner” with the health-care and insurance industry-funded lobbying firm Freedom Works, which has directed angry mobs to Democratic events. At a town-hall meeting on August 10 in Jefferson Parish, many local constituents were reportedly turned away while Tea Party activists were allowed to enter. When the event concluded, Vitter rushed out of the back door and away from the press and his constituents, guarded by a phalanx of police officers.
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mcmchugh99
Yet another C Street Boy.
nickatdabeach
yea max, ol' BJ Clinton lobbed a few bombs at Islamic terrorists in the 90s to get his sex scandal off page-1 so all's fair, isn't it? were you out of diapers yet max? the blumenthal name doesn't carry much weight around the state department these days does it max?
fleetw1978
Nick, it must be ironic to you that you use the diaper analogy, no, you cant be that smart. Since Vitter admitted using hookers and the hookers indicated that he liked to dress up in diapers for his sexual games. Ironic, pathetic all at the same time. Yeah, these are the people who should be making decisions for the nation, Vitter, ensign, grassely, palin. Not a lick of sense or class in the whole gang. Hey, the dems are no better, but you dont see them saying totally stupid things and then doing that exact thing. Oh by the way. Still over 4000 dead in the GOP war of choice in Iraq. How did that work out for the USA?
crngndmhm
Bury your head further in the sand. Nothing of substance to say so you attack the author and the president of over 8 years ago.
BasPos
Unfortunately, the lovely people of Louisiana will likely re-elect this scumbag. He was so low that the C-Street Family could not help him.
nickatdabeach
vitter is as much a scumbag as pelosi & reid & dodd and that notoriious thirsty barney frank.. yea, I agree.
wolverine1987
PERFECT example of the difference in media coverage between right and left. The protesters at town halls for health care are "Obama hating town hall mobs." Were protesters at anti-Iraq War, anti-Bush rallies EVER, I mean ever, even once, described as "Bush hating mobs? I'll answer that for you--never, ever, not one single time.
nortonclybourn
I still don't get why some people try to vilify Pelosi so much. I guess I'm not as frightened of women with guts and political power as I should be.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
AlanD2
wolverine1987: No. The anti-Iraq War protesters were described as Un-American terrorist sympathizers, who should be expelled from the U.S. or be shot.
AlanD2
nortonclybourn: Yeah. If they weren't so afraid of women, maybe they would have more success with their wives. Did anyone else notice that the wife of Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina, has left him?
xlntcat
Politics and politicians in Louisiana have so corrupt and perverse for so long, people have become immune.
larry278
Louisana loves to elect controversal people such as Huey & Earl Long. David Duke didn't do as well as the Long family. Sen Vitter could succeed in Louasiana, where people who don't speak French say that the state's unoffical motto is, "Let the good times roll.".
rezasadj
The Audacity of Whores.
Fedupwithlies
Oooohhh, such big concepts for an uneducated snipe such as yourself
AlanD2
No, rezasadj was educated in the gutter.
AlyanaP
The reform plan, aimed at providing health care coverage for the nearly 50 million Americans that have none, also faces resistance among some conservative Democrats.People wonder who is behind the town hall riots when anyone discusses health care reform, or Obamacare - the answer is Conservatives for Patients' Rights. Conservatives for Patients Rights, or the CPR, is headed by one Rick Scott - who isn't a doctor - but used to be the CEO of a hospital, and under his watch, his medical administration defrauded Medicare of $1.7 billion through a practice called upcoding, wherein a Medicare patient gets treated, but Medicare is billed for additional tests that never took place. (That's fraud.) Realistically, Conservatives for Patients Rights and Mr. Scott will never need short term loans, and the only reason why they oppose the bill is that they want the money from the program for themselves.
AlanD2
Note that FreedomWorks is another player in the anti-health-care-reform game. It is headed by former GOP majority leader Dick Armey, who was fired from the law firm DLA Piper a few days ago because of conflict of interest.
bcaldwell
....wait a minute, a Louisiana politican that screws around on his wife with prostitutes? This is what passes for news? We are talking about the same state that elected Edwin Edwards four times as governor? His exploits were the things of legend. One prostitute in New Orleans and a regular strumpet in D.C.? In Louisiana, that makes you "qualified " for office.
Now I will admit, that Edwards unlike Vitter never outright denied his infidelities, but he never quite admitted them either which of course made him unique. People in Louisiana and the New Orleans area really don't care about that and they know his family values stuff is just talk. He's a Republican from the New Orleans suburbs and so long as he comes from outside New Orleans, the people of Louisiana will give him a pass on the prostitute thing. in 2001 he put out a press release saying he and his wife were undergoing marriage counseling because of the stresses of life in DC as a Congressman. Everyone in his district and the state knew what that meant.
A Louisiana politician that frequents whores......That's something to write about? That's like being shocked that there's a bordello in New Orleans....shocking!!!!!!
missbike
Vitter never got off his ass to do anything before this- except for the ugly hooker! That's right, the only history he has in the Senate is his history as the man with a horse faced strumpet.
Vitter has nothing to offer at all. Karl Rove has been skulking around down here last few elections and I suspect this is his work. I get his spam- the e mail looks like it was done by Fox! There's video of sound bites from Democrats all spliced together out of context supporting the "Death Panel" bullshit.
Swift2
Well, the truth is, Edwards was elected because David Duke was the only other viable candidate. The bumper sticker popular in the day was, "Vote for the Crook." Rather than an actual admirer of Hitler, it was a good choice.
Juniusforte
The Republican charade goes on. "He is doing God's Work" said the deluded preacher. Disinformation messengers like Vitter shilling for the special interests with their sham morality and "hooker" principles - the devil take Louisiana.
igraziani
I think that government officials, specially Sen. David Vitter should loose the senatorial seat for spreading the hate and lies without facts ... is it that punishable by US law?
Fedupwithlies
No, ever since Reagan this is a facist state, as long as you kill the right people and pepper your speaches with the word Jesus you can get away with murder...In fact you can blame your victims for killing each other...
Paisano
I can't take it any more... It seems to be very clear that republicans are just less intelligent than everyone! Is there not ONE sane republican.... .... ... Told you... They are stupid people!
planetgroucho
I'm a Democrat, but have lately been mildly impressed with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC). He voted for Sotomayor because (to paraphrase Sen. Graham), her record was impeccable and impartial and he saw no logical reason why he shouldn't. I also enjoyed him making "Rumsfeld" into a pejorative adjective the other day on a Sunday talk show. Republican? Very much so - but insane? Hardly. He gives me some glimmer of hope that we still live in a country worthy of logical debate and amicable bipartisanship.
Fedupwithlies
Don't be so easy....you know damn well they have no intention of playing nice or fair....or did you learn nothing from Ken Starr? and the rabid nazi's who procurred him?
Fedupwithlies
OH!...and forgive me for not mentioning W's deliberate back of the hand to the intelligence of the people of this nation and the people of Louisiana by his deliberate neglect of New Orleans after Katrina...
ukeman
I beg your pardon pg, Graham can throw the gop bs as far as the rest (see '08 campaign).
Keep looking.
Have you ever heard one republican leader admit the reality of US healthcare?
Or not continue the lie that Canada and UK have terrible systems ad nauseum?
AlanD2
planetgroucho: Graham has been reasonable lately, but he is a confirmed racist from the old days. Has he truly changed, or is he just swinging with the current political winds?
Fedupwithlies
Well, I will admit this applies to the rank and file repukes out there in the nation....However, I assure you, casting W as being stupid tirvializes what he and he rest of his cabal did to this nation.
Trampling on the constitution,
data mining,
spying on citizens w/out the legal authority to do so,
deliberately causing a war based on deliberately falsified information, deliberately angering our allies around the world and creating more verciferous enemies than we already had...
selling us into debt to a COMMUNIST country? deliberately undermind the finaical health of the U.S. economy...This Is Treason!!
W was not stupid...He had an agenda, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing and it was NOT good for this nation...Calling W stupid trivializes what he did and the spirit in which he did it
Redhead5050
Perhaps he could hold meetings in local mens rooms?
WestVillager
In terms of facts, bcaldwell lays it out. No pun. I think the point is a perceived hypocrisy, an ideological foundation Blumenthal finds absolute or something as simple as an example of the pervasive extremism in the US. If he can make money by talking, ultimately, to his friends, awesome.
connie47
Guys like this win by playing to the lowest denominator in American culture, which apparently abounds in Louisiana
missbike
Oh you have no idea what kind of crazies run loose here! Illiterates and holy rollers and the KKK, not to mention that families send their crazies here because we had good public health care, especially for the mentally ill. So yeah, this is a wild place. Vitter used to be a good guy but apparently Rove et al got ahold of him in Washington and the ugly baggy black suits came out and David disappeared into this monster.
Evan after Katrina - not a peep. Our latest Master criminal "Dollar" Bill Jefferson did more for Louisiana than Vitter ever has. And Jefferson just got convicted on a slew of criminal bribery charges.
The guy's pathetic.
earthwindfire
You're right about everything save for this: he was never a good guy, his wife's money bought him his office.
Margem81
Exodus 20
I am the Lord thy God, thou shall have no false gods before me
Thou shall not lie
Thou shall not commit adultery
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's goods, or wife for that matter
Thou shall not bear false witness
These are just a few Golden Oldies kids...
And I'm a die hard Democrat
He and his pals on C-Street are die hard hypocrites
larry278
There are people who devote all of their time to breaking all 10 Commandments(sp?) & die frustrated when they don't reach their goal. The boys at the Cat House on C St & their backers, the Family, aka the Fellowship, are working to end rich & powerful dying frustrated. Who would have thought that Muscular Christianity would evolve into the Fellowship & American megachurches. The gimme god is popular with US fundies. Do right by god. God will make sure that you do well.
A person named Jesus ministered to the powerless & the power. The fellowship brings Jesus to the rich & the powerful. Didn't Jesus love everybody? Spread the word. The word for today is legs.
ljblinddog
Vitter's town hall meetings are sales meetings, highly controled. The irony is that the meetings are held in rooms with exit signs ovr teh doors that open out ward. The people drove to the meetings in cars equiped with airbags, safety bumpers and head rests. They used roads that had lines, traffic lights and stop signs-all govrnment safety regulations. That is all this healthcare reform is. I am embarassed for Louisiana, the state in which I live.
kilchis
Louisana is a national treasure.I have wonderful memories from my year at LSU.The politics from Huey Long to David Duke to this hypocrite have always been over the top,but hey,it's Louisiana. May you recover fom Bush's handling of Katrina,emerge,prosper and get the education system and politicians that you deserve.
AlanD2
Some would say Louisiana already has what it deserves. If you elect the same people over and over again, but expect different results, you are ...
robjh1
Typical cheater throwing dirt on someone else.
Dismiss him from his post please.
"and we are not saved..."
angst7
Thank God Rick Pitino and John Edwards were elected. Your desperate Maxie. Try to find some real news. Go back to friends the Clintons and find your hypocrisy.
ncsteeler
What was Rick Pitino ever elected to? NC traded Edwards for Burr, who is the insurance companies #1 bitch.
Margem81
Indeed... Censure, Resignations...etc... I somehow can't see the relevant comparison when Ensign, Sanford, Vitter.. et al.. have had No, Nada, politically administered consequences dished out to them.
Of course it is embarrassing for all parties where immorality is rampant. However, please justify for me how C-Street's teachings, which are based on a delusion that powerful men, supposedly appointed by God, need not answer to their constituents, nor their spouses for their repugnant behavior.
Both parties need to be reminded that if they are in the public arena as representatives of the people, they must serve as role models. No one is perfect, but these most recent actions of C-Street "residents" stinks of a distorted elitist mindset.
angst7
You have apparently be over listening to Rachel and hate rants about C-Street and religion. Perhaps she should shuffle on down to K-Street or 1600 Penn and listen to the old style Chicago thug speak.
Ritarita
Angst-
Would you have
Anything to say at all
If you weren't allowed
To use talking points?
daddynobucks
Angst,
If the fact that some of the most powerful men in the country, are trying to influence international affairs, based on the teachings of a cult, doesn't bother you, you must be living in a fog.
Fedupwithlies
What tipped you off to the elitist mindset? Could it have been W's rampant delusions of familial imperialism?....
AlanD2
angst7: If you believe that Rachel talks hate rants, you have obviously never listened to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly (not to mention Sean Hannity and that insane Glenn Beck).
Thank you.
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