Republican "Paragons of Virtue"
in High National Offices (Section I ):
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Unlike many of the other Republican Party Sexual Immorality lists, I've taken pains to include only fairly current, significant and definite entries; I cover the federal, state and local level; and on this page I distinguish and list only examples of personal "immorality" or misconduct, as opposed to examples of political "corruption", which I feature on a distinct web page, namely gopcorruption.html. |
| The "scandal du jour", Congressman Mark Foley's abuse of teen-age Congressional pages was enough for force his resignation from office, just a month before his easy win of another term. But in the larger scheme of things, his offenses are small potatoes compared with many of the other Republican Party scandals below.
The logical place to start might be the top, namely corruption at the presidential level. But since it's corruption is Congress that is on people's minds these days, I've moved my section on corruption in the White House toward the end of this page.
So we'll start with Congress, and then down to the state and local level, and then back to the presidential level.
Conservatives promote the idea that Democrats should hang their heads in shame over people like Larry Flint, a publisher of pornography, if they reveal that they vote Democratic. But political parties can't control or be responsible for those who vote for their party's candidates. What parties can control is whom they endorse to run under their banner for any public office. And the Democratic Party doesn't promote people like Larry Flint for public office. Contrast that to the kinds of people the Republican Party regularly selects for positions of leadership in their party, people like :
- In Connecticut, the holier-than-thou Republican party chose the mayor of one of the state's largest cities as its candidate for the U.S. Senate. If Joe Lieberman had caved in to Republican demands in the year 2000 that he not run for relection to the Senate at the same time that he was running for the vice presidency,
 then our nation would have had a Republican Senator from Conn., named Philip Giordano at least until he was sentenced to serve his 37 year sentence in Federal prison as a result of the FBI investigating him for financial shenanigans and discovering in the process that this crooked, disgusting Republican office holder had been repeatedly molesting two pre-teen little girls related to his prostitute-mistress (in the mayor's office among other places).
There was more on this disgusting Republican office holder at :
1010wins.com/topstories, but it has since been removed.
- Bob Packwood, Senator (R-Ore.), resigned in 1995 under a threat of public senate hearings related to 10 female ex-staffers accusing him of sexual harassment.
and now many MORE Republican Congressmen & women :
- According to L. H. Carter, reported to be one of Newt Gingrich's closest friends until a falling-out in 1979, "Newt is amoral. There isn't any right or wrong, there isn't any conservative or liberal. There's only what will work best for Newt Gingrich."
Mary Kahn, wife of Mr. Gingrich's Congressional campaign manager during the 1970s said, "Newt uses people and then discards them as useless. He really is a man with no conscience. He just doesn't seem to care who he hurts or why." Keep those to quotes in mind as you read what Mr. Gingrich told the Washington Post on January 3, 1995: "I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I am doing it."
- When Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) was a mere state representative back home in Illinois, being a devout Catholic husband and father of four sons,
 didn't hamper his five (or seven) year affair with a married woman with three kids, an affair that continued even after the woman's husband, Fred Snodgrass, found out about it and demanded that Hyde leave his wife alone. Nor did it prevent Hyde from later being honored by the Pope as an outstanding Catholic layman. When this leader of the Clinton impeachment process in the Congress was asked how he felt about his own infidelity and the breaking up that family, he exonerated himself on the basis that it was "a youthful indiscretion" (committed in his early forties when he was not much younger than Clinton!). This from "Mr. Roman Catholic Layman" and leading spokesman for the Catholic pro-life stance in the Congress. ( See Hypocrite of the House).
- Bob Livingston (R-Louisiana) was about to replace Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House until he resigned in disgrace when it was revealed that he admitted to had been involved in several adulterous affairs, (while attempting to crucify Democratic President Clinton for having done much less)!
- Bob Barr (R-Georgia): the principal sponsor of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, has been married three (or is it now four) times. And at a party in 1992, Barr actually licked whipped cream off the breasts of two women, neither of them his current wife. Now that's family values!
- Bill Thomas (R-California):
This 11-term Republican is chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Health. In June, (2003?) the Bakersfield Californian reported that Thomas, who is married, was having an affair with health care lobbyist Deborah Steelman, who steered huge campaign gifts to Thomas' war chest. In an "open letter to friends and neighbors" (voters), Thomas did not deny the relationship, but said during his legislative career, " . . . Any personal failures of commitment or responsibility to my wife, family, or friends are just that, personal. I have never traded a public responsibility for a personal one and I never will."
- Dan Burton (R-Indiana):
The Chairman of the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee. He hates President Clinton so much that he publicly called him a "scumbag". Following an expose, Burton was forced to admit that he fathered an out-of-wedlock child, a fact he denied for years.
He has yet to admit, however, that during 38 years of marriage he has committed adultery with dozens of women, sexually assaulted others (including a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood), and kept mistresses on his campaign and public payrolls – to the tune of at least a half-million dollars.
- Charles Canady (R-Florida), Judiciary Committee member. A leading opponent of abortion, Canady lied to his constituents about his adulterous affair with Sharon Becker, which caused her divorce from Florida businessman Robert Becker.
- Dick Armey (R-Texas): as an economics professor before entering Congress, was accused of sexually harassing female students, according to the Dallas Observer.
- John Peterson (R-Pennsylvania): has been accused of sexual harassment and hostile-work-environment claims by six women.
- Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho): one of first to condemn Clinton, admitted to having a six year extramarital affair with a married associate. The Spokane Spokesman-Review, but now she claims a pardon from a higher authority: "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it," she revealed. (She has since divorced and remarried – no doubt with the Lord's blessing!-)
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J.C. Watts (R-Oklahoma): has said "Character is simply doing right when no one is looking." Watts has tried to cover up his out-of-wedlock child.
- John Schmitz (R-Orange County, CA), former extreme right-wing Republican fathered two children by a mistress — a former student named Carla Stuckle whom Schmitz taught when he was a professor at Santa Ana College. One of these children was once admitted to an Orange County hospital with hair tied in a square knot around his penis so tightly that it was almost severed.
Congressman Schmitz' daughter, Mary Kay LeTourneau, made national headlines when as a school teacher, she was arrested twice for having sex and producing two children with an underage student of hers (beginning when he was only 13 years old).
- Don Sherwood (R-PA) Had a five year adulterous affair which only ended when his mistress sued him for physical abuse (and attempted murder?) in 2004.
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Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl, which produced a child.
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Donald "Buz" Lukens (R-Ohio) was found guilty of having sex with a minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
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Ken Calvert (R-California) said in 1998, "We can't forgive what occurred between the President and Lewinsky." This is the same Christian Coalition ally, who was caught by police in 1993 receiving oral sex from a prostitute. His ex-wife also sued him for failure to pay alimony.
- Randy Cunningham: In their corruption case, which resulted in a prison sentence of several years, Federal prosecutors also investigated allegations that Congressman 'Duke' Cunningham was periodically supplied with prositutes.
- On July 20, 1983, the House voted to simultaneously censure two members of Congress for sexual misconduct, the first time it had ever done so.
Dan Crane (R-Illinois) was censured for having sexual relations with a 17 year-old female page.
Gerry Studds(D-Mass.) was censured for having sexual relations with a 17 year-old male page.
Conservative Republicans try to get some kind of political advantage by treating these two cases as morally equivalent, or they speak only of the Democrat, Studds. But here's the rest of the story that they don't want people to know:
- Repub. Crane was a married man at the time and a father of six young children, while Dem. Studds had been single at the time. As homosexuals, Studds and the page were not allowed to marry, but their relationship was so consensual that they had been together for ten years from the time of the original liason until 1983, when the "scandal" broke.
- Neither of the two resigned from Congress; they both ran for re-election.
- The Repub. Crane was defeated. The Dem. Studds was re-elected for 5 more terms for a total of 20 years.
- Robert Bauman was campaigning for his fourth term as a Maryland Congressman in 1980. A practicing Roman Catholic with a wife and child, he was one of the most vocal conservatives in a very conservative Congress. He regularly rallied for old-fashioned values and attacked all supporters of abortion and homosexual rights. His campaign looked rock-solid, before it changed overnight with a series of shocking revelations. The public learned that Bauman had been charged with soliciting sex from a 16-year old boy he picked up at a gay bar, and that he had been the victim of an extortion scheme by a man who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with him. This, combined with an alcohol problem (which did not seem to bother his fellow Congressmen before), doomed his political career.
- Sue Myrick, Congresswoman (R-NC), describes herself as a "devout Christian." Yet she's divorced and now married to the man with whom some say she has admitted committing adultery when she and he were married to their prior spouses.
- Jim Bunn, (R-Oregon) With his success due in great part to support from the Christian Coalition, Bunn won his congressional seat, then left his wife (and mother of his five children), married a staffer, and put his new wife on the state payroll with a salary of $ 97,500.
- Ed Schrock, two-term republican congressman, with a 92% approval rating from the Christian Coalition. Cosponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, consistently opposed gay rights. Married, with wife and kids. Withdrew his candidacy for a third term after tapes of him soliciting for gay sex were circulated.
- Adelphia Communications Corp.: Donated large sums of money to some of the most conservative members of Congress. They are also the first cable company to offer hard-core adult movies to subscribers. [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/8/12123/29391 ]>
- Mike Bowers Former State Attorney General of Georgia, prosecuted the famous "Bowers vs. Hardwick" case, based on Georgia anti-sodomy laws. Admitted to a 10-year adulterous affair.
- Andrew Buhr, Republican politician, former committeeman for Hadley Township Missouri, was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.
- Neil Bush, brother of George W. Bush, in a March 2003 divorce deposition, admitted repeatedly having sex with strange women who just showed up at his room while he was on an Asian business trip.
- Charles Canady, Congressman (R-Florida), Judiciary Committee member. Lied to his constituents about his adulterous affair with Sharon Becker, which caused her divorce.
- Roy Cohn, continually condemned gays and gay rights. Was a closet gay who died of AIDS.
- Carey Lee Cramer, political consultant and producer of negative presidential campaign ads, convicted of molesting two young girls, one of whom lived with him, and was 8 yrs old; the other starred in an anti-Kerry commercial. political skullduggery.
- Lewis Libby, former Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. In 1996 published a novel containing bizarre sexual content, including bestiality and pedophilia.Full Details
- Bill O'Reilly Right-wing conservative talk show host on Fox News, sued for sexual harrassment by his producer. The suit included graphic details, including tape-recordings. O'Reilly's wife was pregnant at the time. O'Reilly settled and paid millions of dollars rather than have the details become public.
- Judith Regan, Conservative Republican writer and pundit has had several well-publicized affairs and marriages and divorces, and tried to publish a book by O.J. Simpson that wasn't even up to FOX's low standards.
Here's an interesting article from "Pat & Jerry Country":
"Convicted sex offender wins
'Republican of the Year' award",
by Matthew Roy, The Virginian-Pilot ©
February 13, 2002
Suffolk,VA -- " previous commitment will keep a Suffolk man from traveling
to Washington, D.C., to accept a Republican of the Year award: He's
serving a 26-year state prison sentence.
Spokesmen for the National Republican Congressional Committee, an arm of
the Republican National Committee that raises millions of dollars to
elect GOP candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives, acknowledged
Tuesday that convicted sex offender Mark A. Grethen was invited to
accept the award at its Business Advisory Council's luncheon in March.
U.S Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairs the NRCC. . . The award was rescinded after the NRCC learned that Grethen, 44, a former businessman, was convicted last year of six sex
crimes involving children -- two counts each of forcible sodomy,
aggravated sexual battery and indecent liberties. He is in the Deep
Meadow Correctional Center, and his projected release date is Sept. 25, 2024."
{ www.pilotonline.com/news/nw0213per.html for the original article.)
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