Via Politico: Bob Filner’s 9th accuser comes forward. But at least he’s a Democrat! Sure glad the LGBT activists in San Diego went all out to back for mayor this noble exemplar of their political values rather than, gasp, his openly gay Republican opponent. Now, that would have been beyond the pale!
More Fun in San Diego
ADVERTISEMENT
26 Comments for “More Fun in San Diego”
posted by Doug on
For god’s sake, Stephen, give it a rest. Get over it and move on. Maybe it’s time you got back on your medication along with those other paragons of virtue David Vitter and Mark Sanford.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Democrats don’t have the ability to look a man in the eye and get a sense of his soul, as Republicans do.
posted by Doug on
Apparently a hit or miss proposition with Republicans too.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Mostly miss.
posted by Mark on
The idea that “LGBT activists” always should support a gay candidate, even when the opposing candidate is better on their issues, is an intriguing one. I can’t seem to find a link for Stephen’s enthusiastic endorsement of Tammy Baldwin in last year’s Wisconsin Senate race. Perhaps he could provide it?
posted by Houndentenor on
Now, now. Stephen supported openly gay candidates like Tammy Baldwin and Jared Polis. Right?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
LGBT activists in San Diego went all out to back for mayor this noble exemplar of their political values rather than, gasp, his openly gay Republican opponent.
Exactly right, Stephen. San Diego voters put their “political values” — support for “equal means equal” — ahead of sexual orientation.
Filner (according to the NYT article you quote early and often) was “an outspoken advocate of gay rights”, with a long, proven record behind him.
DeMaio, on the other hand, spent so much time “running away from the gay” that even the Log Cabin Republicans initially endorsed another candidate.
The article goes on to point out that “LGBT activists” strongly supported a straight, conservative Republican major, Jerry Sanders. Why? Sanders fought Prop 8 hard while DeMaio hid out in the basement, shying away from the issue to keep his seat on the City Council. Hum.
The principle you don’t seem to understand is a simple one: Gays and lesbians tend to support candidates who support equality. Gays and lesbians tend not to support candidates who don’t support equality.
It is that simple. Think on it for a while, and you’ll get it.
Filner turned out to be a turd, joining the long list of politicians of both parties who don’t seem to grasp the idea that zippers have an “up” position and that hands are best kept to themselves. San Diego Democrats are pushing him to resign, as he should. But those post-election developments have nothing whatsoever to do with the support he received during the election. In your bitterness, you seem to miss that point, too.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Gays and lesbians tend to support candidates who support equality. Gays and lesbians tend not to support candidates who don’t support equality.
Along these lines, I notice that the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Marin County voted to endorse marriage equality.
posted by tom jefferson iii on
Heck, where was the gay Republican support or calls for support when Fred Karger ran for president?
Even if he had zero chance of winning, had he gotten good funding raising numbers (as Ron Paul did in a primary) he would at least be helping to prove that such a viewpoint had a voice within the party. He supported ‘equal means equal’.
Why did he pretty much get ignored by the same sort of gay Republicans that are now insisting that gays in San Diego should have backed a gay Republican — because he was a gay and DID NOT support equal rights……????
posted by Lori Heine on
Yes, Republicans are quicker to call on their fellow politicians to resign, or at least repent, when one of them gets caught with his zipper down. Is this because they’re more moral than Democrats? Or more responsible?
That seems to be a recurring thesis in posts on this blog. And it’s utter baloney.
The real reason GOP-ers are quicker to do this is that the social cons, who still control the party, must maintain some credibility on their fitness to be moral leaders for the nation — i.e., stick their noses into everybody’s bedroom and tell us how to live even the most intimate portions of our lives.
Ultimately, their greater vigilance is in the service of power. The goal, of which soc-cons never lose sight, is theocracy.
Virtue and responsibility have nothing to do with it. It’s really all about power. Only the semblance of virtue and responsibility — the shallow appearance of it — is necessary. Notice the theocrats never call anybody out until AFTER they’ve been caught with their pants down.
posted by Doug on
I don’t recall any Republicans calling out David Vitter or Mark Sanford and minimal criticism for Larry Craig and John Ensign and there were man Republicans who helps hide Ensign’s sexual mess. No one called out Henry Hyde or Newt Gingrich either.
posted by Houndentenor on
Can you even imagine a Democrat parading around with wife #3 like Giuliani and Gingrich. In fact Giuliani had two very public affairs while still married to wife #2. And it was bizarre to hear my parents Tea Party/Evangelical friends defending Gingrich even though he was running around campaigning with the woman he was sleeping with while married to #2 (who cheated with him while he was married to #1). Yeah, don’t really see the Republicans any more faithful or likely to call out their own.
posted by Houndentenor on
I can’t think of any Republicans who had to resign over their sex scandals. Even Larry Craig and that guy from Staten Island (the one who had the car accident on the way to visit the child he had with his mistress at the hospital…blanking on his name) finished out their terms. Mark Sanford seemed to have no problems getting renominated and winning, nor did David Vitter. Sorry, I don’t see Republicans faster to call out their own for sex scandals. I think Democrats are in the last few years, mostly not wanting a repeat of the Clinton scandals (at least that’s my take on it).
posted by Jim Michaud on
Vito Fossella.
posted by Houndentenor on
Thank you. He was my Congressman (very briefly as I moved into Bay Ridge just as the scandal broke) so you’d think I’d remember that.
posted by Lori Heine on
Is it really wise to get into heated debate about how many angels can dance on the head of which big-corporate-money party’s pin?
Keep a big scoreboard, if you want, and we’ll tally which party’s political quacks discipline their own more often. Sheesh.
Try to focus on what I’m saying. One of the central theses of THIS blog is that Republicans are better about calling out their own than Democrats. Hence this post, and many others.
My real point — apparently lost — is that EVEN IF it’s true that the GOP is better about cleaning house after a sex scandal, power — in the service of theocratic government — is the aim.
The Vitters, the Sanfords and the Larry Craigs are proof that there’s no substance behind all the theocrat outrage about immorality. When it’s convenient, they still want to trot that outrage out and see how far it gets them.
posted by Houndentenor on
What it shows is what hypocrites American social conservatives are. Those of us raised in it already knew that. There are a lot of Larry Craigs and Anthony Weiners out there who just weren’t stupid enough to get caught. I’m not convinced that other people’s sex lives are any of my business, but I can’t help but enjoy the Schadenfreude when one of these self-righteous hypocrites gets caught with his pants down. One day both parties will wise up and call a truce. I suspect it’s coming in a few years when everyone running for office will have all kinds of “youthful indiscretions” well documented on face book. Or not. A lot of people have a great deal invested in their hypocrisy.
posted by Doug on
You hit the nail on the head. It’s not the sexual indiscretion that pisses me off it’s the hypocrisy and ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude. Republicans campaign on family and morality. I don’t see many Democrats campaigning on those terms. When a Republican gets caught with his pants down, so to speak, it’s all about I was bad, I’m human, but god forgives me, but you Democrats are just bad. And even more galling is that their base forgives them and condemns the Democrats.
posted by Don on
I had to re-read Lori’s post a couple of times to make sure I got what she was saying. At first, I thought she was saying that Rs are good at taking their members to task. Keeping the Ds out of it for that simple proposition, I find them very lacking. Mostly because they simply do not. Oh, there’s outrage. But, as Lori points out, power is more important than strict adherence to moralizing. But I think the mechanism for that result isn’t an abandonment of moral principles. It is the invocation of the forgiveness principle by politicians. The same principle that has led the Catholic church to shuffle around sexual predators amongst their ranks is leaving all heterosexual politicians in power amongst Rs. Vitter and Sanford strike me as the most egregious. They are no less sorry than Weiner seems to be. Oh they said they’re sorry. But their post-apology behavior suggests otherwise. And therein lies the difficulty of the forgiveness approach. The individuals swear never to do it again. But sometimes the underlying reason for the transgression remains and they are unable to simply “stop” what they are doing. Sanford is the most annoying. He’s terrorizing his ex-wife while running for office. Then he gets elected.
Where I have a problem here is with the party structures. They have the power to recruit candidates without these problems. In the case of Florida, I regularly jump at my friends over Rick Scott. Really? There were no viable Rs to run who had not run a company that defrauded Medicare/Medicaid to the tune of billions? Really?
They usually slink in shame for voting for him, but they want lower taxes and grumble about spending. Considering we have no income tax and Rs control the legislature, I’m just not sure how taxes will skyrocket under either party.
I find it incredulous that no one in the inner circles of politics didn’t know about Filson’s tendencies. And they didn’t work hard to recruit a better candidate. Same with Florida’s governor, Sanford’s congressional district, or Vitter’s senate seat. NYC will take care of itself. Which liberal gets the job is yet to be seen. But at least there’s a contest amongst them where at least one of them doesn’t have a serious character issue.
But I cannot agree with Stephen about his diatribe that gay voters should have supported someone else because they should have known. It’s hypocritical on its face. He’s just enjoying the collapse of a candidate he hated. But at the risk of being hypocritical, I have certainly enjoyed the spectacular fall of politicians I disliked and wished never held office to begin with.
posted by Lori Heine on
Don understands. My take on this is not that the politicians in either big-corporate party are better than those in the other. This blog repeatedly tries to say that Repubs are somehow better than Dems. Or at least that, according to the whiny-weasel-watchwords of the New Millenium, they are “not as bad.”
Or that caring about a politician’s stance on gay issues wouldn’t tilt most voters toward the Dems. A lot of gay GOP candidates have collaborated with their party’s horrible positions on gays. The notion that they automatically deserve our vote in an election because the opposing candidates are straight is ridiculous.
I believe that POWER is the key to understanding what makes nearly every big-corporate-party politician run.
These are not average, ordinary people. Gay or straight, Republican or Democrat, they are a different breed. They crave power for its own sake. Perhaps there’s even a correlation between their borderline-sociopathic hunger for power and their inability (unwillingness) to keep their zippers up.
They are another sort of animal. And though their intellects may be highly developed in some ways, they are animals. Their humanity tends to be less developed than that of the average person.
This is a large part of the libertarian critique of a large and powerful government. We’ve let the apes out of the zoo — and now they’re fighting over who rules us.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I find it incredulous that no one in the inner circles of politics didn’t know about Filson’s tendencies.
It is hard to believe, given that Filner served for a decade on the San Diego School Board, and 14 years in Congress, before running for Mayor. But there was certainly nothing public until recently, so who knows who knew what?
The bottom line, though, is that Filner was elected — the first Democratic Mayor of San Diego, oft described as the most conservative area of California, in almost 20 years — by a 5% margin. That’s not even a close election.
I took a look at other 2012 races in the city, and Republicans seem to have won the other races, typically with 55-65% of the vote.
All I can figure is that DeMaio must have been a real dud of a candidate to lose that badly to a 70-year-old Democrat.
posted by Houndentenor on
First of all, there’s “knowing” and then there’s KNOWING. I don’t know anything about San Diego politics so I can’t comment on who might have known or suspected what, but there have been many times when people suspected things or had heard rumors, but that’s not exactly the same thing about knowing something. Politics is worse about gossip than show business and everyone has some “friend of a relative told me that…” story that may or may not have any basis in fact. If people knew and counted on it staying a secret, then that was stupid. Secrets have a way of coming out at the worst possible time. It’s better to get the story out yourself (so you can tell it your own way) OR simply not run if it’s going to be this bad. BTW, there were similar accusations about Schwartzegger during his campaign. And plenty of others. Sometimes we let people get away with things. In NYC we watched Giuliani not only have two very public affairs while in office but procure city jobs for both of those women (the second of which he later married) for which they were not really qualified. We don’t have anything that resembles a uniform standard for personal conduct of elected. officials. Often we look the other way when someone is getting the job done or has a chance of winning or whatever rationalization we use. It happens all the time. I laughed back in the 1990s when people said that if Bill Clinton had been a CEO he’d have been fired for messing around with someone in the office. I worked for several CEOs and most of them were doing the same thing (and worse if you count using the corporate jet to fly your mistress around to meetings at company expense worse). Most of the time in politics people look the other way so long as it doesn’t become a public scandal.
posted by Mike in Houston on
Can we make an informal agreement going forward that after the first three posts of ‘god give it a rest’, the rest of us will stop posting in response? Behavior modification folks… Time to stop feeding Stephen’s trolling.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
What about the replies to the replies that are asking us not to reply anymore ?
😉
posted by Kosh III on
“Notice the theocrats never call anybody out until AFTER they’ve been caught with their pants down.”
Yes, where is the indignation over Reagan’s adultery? Jesus said in Mark that if one divorces and remarries while spouse #1(Jane Wyman) is alive commits adultery. Don’t the Fascist Republicans want to plaster the Decalogue everywhere? Except in their hearts.
Plus Reagan committed Divorce. Why don’t they hate him like God does? “I hate divorce says the Lord” Malachi 2:16
The GOP is quick to hate gays.
“Woe unto you….hypocrites….” Jesus Matthew 23:1
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Once he resigns — do they have to hold a special election or something early or just let the ‘number 2’ (if you don’t mind the ST:TNG expression) finish out the term?