In the past few days since the Mark Foley scandal erupted, conservatives were speculating that the whole matter was the so-called "October Surprise", the great scandal that was brewed up specifically to doom the Republicans in the November mid-term elections.
Well guess what? It wasn’t!
You know how I know that? Because the REAL surprise just aired on "60 Minutes".
It seems a former member of the Bush Imperium’s "Department of God" by the name of David Kuo, who still calls himself an "evangelical", is doing the news circuit claiming that the whole Imperium mocked the very bible-thumping freedom-haters they pandered to. He even claimed that Darth Rove used the "Department of God" as part of the 2002 mid-term election to cement Republican control. This was a charge that the Washington Post made as well.
Well now Kuo is disillusioned about the whole idea, and he’s venting his disillusionment in his book "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction". Of course the book is due out tomorrow, which is why CBS (whose parent company also owns the publishing company) gets the night-before exclusive.
THIS is the kind of story that defines an "October Surprise". Bob Ney’s guilty plea and refusal to step down from office? Mark Foley’s shocker and Speaker Hastert’s ineptitude over both? No. Those are things that should have been diffused before they became election-time embarrassments.
In fact, if anything, the embarrassments actually dilute the impact of Kuo’s "shocking" story. The Imperium using the bible-thumpers? It’s not really a shocker given the personae of some of the key players.
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