Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
They're taking the suspicion many have in this mostly conservative town that Democrats care about power more than anything else and turning it into demonstrable fact. So, good going guys!
It's cute that you think this is an "Democratic" issue.
It's about the perception of how elected officials from each party respond to scandals like this. Both parties have scandals, but it recently it seems like the Dems have become more likely to try to retain their positions despite those scandals (and far more likely that Republicans). Honestly, you almost can't blame them. Democrats get far more of a pass from the media normally (if for no other reason than far fewer people in the media actively look for things to pin on them), so it's natural that they'll tend to think that they can get away with more and more blatant abuses of their power and position.
Just look at this case. It's not like he just started doing this in the last 6 months. We have women coming forward from at least 8 years ago, when he was a US congressman. Why didn't they come forward earlier? In many cases, politics. One of the women (the Dean, IIRC) didn't say anything because she was afraid that her school, which heavily relied on public funding, would suffer if she did. Other women were members of his campaign or regular staff, and presumably jobs and/or elections were on the line.
It's just interesting to me that while both sides occasionally get bad apples, it seems like the ones that end up in the GOP are usually found out pretty quickly and ousted, while it's Democrats who seem to get away with things for long periods of time. I'm just tossing out a theory that the willingness of liberals in general to look the other way in the name of political advantage (the whole "ends justify the means" thing) is a major factor to this, and that this in turn leads those politicians to become increasingly blatant with their behavior until you have what appears to be a clear case of "how the hell did he get away with this for so long?".