Maybe it’s just my imagination but it certainly appears to me that the ongoing revelations of sexual abuse and impropriety have inspired a host of new conspiracy theories. Two, published in prominent media outlets, really struck me as loony. The first characterized the revelations as a conspiracy by Christians to further constrain sexual behavior. The second characterized Al Franken’s resignation as a move in a plot to oust Trump, sacrificing a pawn, as it were.
Maybe it’s just my imagination. Maybe it’s another form of misdirection. Maybe people just don’t know what they’re writing any more. Maybe it’s the next phase of the ongoing scandal.
I thought it was clear that Franken was being sacrificed for the Democrats to gain the high moral ground on Roy Moore, whose name most Americans outside of Alabama won’t recall by the next election.
To gain the high moral ground they’d all need to resign.
As I’ve been pointing out since the issue of sexual improprieties first began to touch on the Congress, if every Congressmen who was guilty of sexual improprieties resigned, they couldn’t make a quorum call.
“….if every Congressmen who was guilty of sexual improprieties resigned, they couldn’t make a quorum call.”
Its not what you know, its what you can prove. They are going for the moral high ground. And with a media willing to help them paint that picture its a politically viable, if morally corrupt, posture.
It’s a lot harder to keep things under wraps than it used to be and as they said about somebody or other the coverup is worse than the crime.
I agree about the Dems moral ground strategy to upend what they will unrelentngly describe as the hypocritical, immoral republican party. Their rhetoric, into the 2018 midterms, will claim they have drained their side of the swamp, by getting rid of 2 senators beseiged by allegations, while the Rs are adding to it, should AL vote Moore into office.
“Maybe it’s just my imagination. Maybe it’s another form of misdirection. Maybe people just don’t know what they’re writing any more.”
I think it’s just an effect of living in the elite bubble.
Or is the need to say something, anything to fill the quota of words and generate clicks?
BTW, haven’t much connecting the Russians to all this but that will come with time.
Before the Harvey Weinstein thing got major national attention, and kicked this off, I kept seeing the far right commentators on several blogs bringing him up — “Sleazy Democrat media mogul rapes people and donates to Clintons, why haven’t Democrats denounced him?†I don’t think it was a conspiracy as much as that weeks talking points to distract from whatever awful thing was happening that week/month.
The Democrats aren’t trying to claim the moral high ground, it’s just that as a society we’ve hit a tipping point on whether we accept sexual harassment, and Weinstein was for some reason the spark. The Democrats are more swift to react since a large part of the Democratic base is feminists and working women. We also don’t have anyone irreplaceable that is implicated, so it’s easier — no sitting President who wanders Miss Teen USA dressing rooms to ogle underage girls or who grabs women by their housecats; no Senate candidate who touches underage girls and who cannot be replaced on the ballot.
That’s all. No grand conspiracy. No one expects Trump to resign over his deeply creepy behavior and statements.
If Franken were from a State with a Republican governor, he wouldn’t be resigning this quickly. With a close Senate, he would be too valuable. Unless he were a pedophile, that might be a line too far.
The Democrats are pursuing the moral high ground because it’s easier to do so than not with our base. But, there’s plenty of room on the moral high ground if Republicans want to join us.
There’s even a small plateau below the moral high ground where you can demand that your pedophiles not run for re-election. It’s an easier reach.