In his Oct. 3 column, Brent Bozell resorts to that old conservative standby, the Clinton Equivocation, in the Mark Foley scandal to accuse Democrats of a double standard:
Since when have the Democrats ever insisted a politician be held accountable for a sex scandal involving a staffer, let alone the politician’s party leaders? Take Senator Durbin. Did he vote on any impeachment counts against President Clinton for perjury or obstruction of justice over Clinton’s sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky?
Did Democrats – the party of feminism, the party that hates sexual harassers – demand accountability when President Clinton was accused of putting Kathleen Willey’s hand on his crotch as she asked for a job? Or demand accountability when President Clinton was accused of dropping his pants in front of Paula Jones and asking that state employee to kiss his genitalia?
You know the answers. Let’s continue.
Did Democrats – who must have chortled at the 1996 GOP convention when NBC anchor Tom Brokaw suggested the Republicans don’t think much about “women’s issues” like rape – demand answers from President Clinton when Juanita Broaddrick tearfully recounted to NBC in 1999 how Bill Clinton raped and brutalized her in a Little Rock hotel in the late 1970s?
Nice equivocation there, Brent. Also nice of him to downplay the Foley case as a “sex talk scandal” (though he does say of Foley, “I hope he’s prosecuted”). But has Bozell ever spilled much ink decrying ethical lapses by Republicans compared to his repeated blanket denunciations of Democrats? We doubt it.
Which makes him just as guilty of “making national political hay” out of the Foley scandal as he accuses Democrats of doing.