How David Vitter GOT AWAY With The HOOKER Scandal

:think: The Republican ' FAMILY VALUES ' Sham. Quite frankly, the only way this cockroach will get away with ' Hookergate ' is if stories of his hooker solicitation are treated as tame and acceptable. Someone needs to buy up some prime billboard space all over HIS district and run pointed ads focusing on his infidelity, family values and broken public trust.:thumbsup:



" Three years ago, the "family values" conservative was caught in a hooker scandal. Now, he's cruising to reelection "



Sometimes the strangest stories in politics are hiding in plain sight. So it is with Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana.


Vitter, a first-term senator, rose to infamy three years ago, when his phone number appeared in the records of the escort agency run by the so-called D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey. In the wake of the disclosure, Vitter made a de facto admission of having paid for sex, confessing to "a very serious sin in my past."


The careers of other Republicans have been vaporized by infractions that could well be viewed as less serious. Last month, Indiana Rep. Mark Souder resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair. A hitherto-obscure California state assemblyman, Mike Duvall, departed last fall after being picked up on an open mic boasting about his amorous activities with women other than his wife.


The taboo that continues to cling to prostitution -- along with the salient fact that soliciting a prostitute is illegal -- would have been enough, one might have thought, to put an end to Vitter’s career. This is especially true given the contrast between his actions and his ardent social conservatism. (The year before he was ensnared in the scandal, Vitter declared himself "a conservative who opposes radically redefining marriage, the most important social institution in human history.")


Yet Vitter does not seem to face any great peril in his battle for reelection in November.


A survey from the Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling (PPP) earlier this month gave him a 46-37 lead over his Democratic challenger, Rep. Charlie Melancon. Other polls have given Vitter even wider leads. According to Real Clear Politics' running average, Vitter enjoys an average advantage of 15.7 points. Especially considering the national climate of 2010, and Louisiana's ideological bent, Vitter doesn’t seem to have much to sweat.


Perhaps more important from Vitter’s perspective, no serious challenge has materialized on his right flank. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council flirted with getting into the race, as did Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne. In the end, both men stepped back.


"It takes more than one sex scandal to bring down a Louisiana politician," is the salty verdict of John Maginnis, a Baton Rouge-based political journalist who, as the author of a book about the libidinous former Gov. Edwin Edwards, knows what he is talking about. Louisiana voters, Maginnis adds, “are able to separate human failures from one’s performance in office.”

There's more to it than this, though. Vitter is clearly being boosted by President Obama's unpopularity in the state, and by Melancon's low name recognition. But a bigger factor may be a peculiar form of partisanship.


Within the past year, PPP has canvassed Republican voters in three states represented by scandal-dogged GOP politicians: Vitter in Louisiana, Sen. John Ensign in Nevada and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. (Ensign and Sanford both had extramarital affairs.) In all three cases, the support of Republican voters remained solid. Last year, when Vitter’s embarrassment was fresher in voters’ minds, Republican voters in his home state still gave him a 62-19 approval rating.



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<http://www.salon.com/news/david_vitter/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/06/29/david_vitter_wild_side>

isn't it time we MovedOn?

he has important business to do to the American people

Seriously, people, if you weren't chomping at the bit to have President Clinton impeached over Lewinsky/Paula Jones, it's hard to make a serious argument that a Senator should be held to a higher standard. If the issue is hypocrisy, keep in mind that among other things Clinton was big on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace.

If anyone is looking for a reason why Vitter got away with it, you can use "the Clinton precedent" as shorthand.

I wonder if memories are so short here because so many participants are so young, or because of willful self-delusion, or because of simple ruthless political calculation... but here is a great example about the failure to hold to consistent principles coming back to bite.

Clinton had his faults but he didn't go around with that holier than thou attitude.

"The other thing we have to do is to take seriously the role in this problem of...older men who prey on underage women...There are consequences to decisions and...one way or the other, people always wind up being held accountable." Bill Clinton, June 13, 1996

Excuse me while I try to sort out the cognitive dissonance necessary to make an issue out of this - I could have sworn I saw not all too long ago the entire party bet its political future on this very kind of thing not being a big deal. Any members of MoveOn want to help me out here?

Vitter made a career about it. That's the difference. Vitter is ten times the hypocrite Clinton ever was.

That being said, you make a good point. Either sexual indiscretions are a big deal for both parties, or they are not. I would prefer to focus on the issues, however, prostitution is in fact, a crime. Cheating on one's wife is not a criminal act, to my knowledge. Why should Joe Sixpack have to pay a $1000 a fine and spend the weekend in jail when he gets caught with a hooker at the point, while Vitter gets re-elected. There's a double standard there.

Kindly explain that and what does MoveOn have to do with this?

That's right, I didn't think so. Talk about lack of consistency. Once again, it's about the hypocrisy.

Vitter is an anti equality hypocrite and also he committed a crime. I find it amusing when folks try to push some 'free love' message to defend those who have built careers attacking the families and relationships of other people as ungodly or immoral. It is an absurd stance. A wide stance.
John Edwards, same thing. Folks wanted to whine 'it is a personal matter' but Edwards had paraded about the nation speaking about his 'one man, one woman Baptist values' and his daddy the deacon, and how Sacred marriage is to him. Said he was so devoted to the Biblical ideal of marriage that he could not support equal rights.
With these slandering hypocrites the issue is the slander, and the hypocrisy, and it evades me that anyone can fail to see that.
Vitter got his office replacing a man who resigned due to an affair, and Vitter said that Bill Clinton should resign over his.
Hypocrisy and slander.

...with extreme social conservatism at front and center. David Vitter did. That right there is a big difference.

Furthermore, Bill Clinton's marital infidelity cost him a lot. While he was not run out of office, he was impeached, and that stain will always be on his record. Of course some of us think that is exactly why the Republicans were so hell-bent on pursuing it, even though they knew they had little chance of actually kicking him out of office.

David Vitter, on the other hand, ran as an upright and moral man. His wife mocked Hillary Clinton in an interview for staying with Bill Clinton after his infidelity, saying "I'm more like Lorena Bobbitt myself..." (smirk, smirk). But then when the time came and hubby was outed, l'il wifey suddenly had a change of heart and as far as we know, she did not act on her bob-it fantasy.

No one went after David Vitter to the tune of $60M just to see if he might have done something wrong. On the contrary, even when the Madame's list first came out, ABC News said they had found "no names of interest" in the list. Yet later it came out that there he was, a U.S. Senator, right there on the list. Now just imagine if that had been a Democratic Senator? You think the network would have "not found" that name? Ha, ha, har de har har har. We all know better.

I'd rather this country got over its sexual hypocrisy in general. But Vitter is so far from living what he preaches that it is astonishing how people in his district accept it.

Maybe the media should be asking Wendy Vitter as to ' WHY ' she hasn't followed through on her pledge to " walk away ".


Salon.com

Oct 29, 2004



" And Wendy Vitter does not appear to be the indulgent type.

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he'd had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston's wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

<http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/10/29/lousiana_race/index2.html>

Clinton had consensual sex with an intern. That's the difference between him and Vitter, and the standard Vitter should be held to.

Vitter is ineffectual and has not done much to help Louisiana from what I can tell. Charlie Melancon seems to be a 'real person' with a heart.

From drug addict Rush Limbaugh to Vitter to Sanford to Souder.

After all Deborah Jeane Palfrey death was so convenient but not very neat.

Damn, too bad Ann Rule is so old now.

have consequences, hence the policies of the southern gulf states that led to the BP oil spill disaster. WAKE UP!

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

why?

common perception is that republicans are christian, family-loving people who somehow "slipped" ...."stuff" they do wrong, just sort of "happened"..they had no part of it really..it just happened..and then God forgave them.. end of story

A Democrat farts the wrong direction and everyone including those who claim to be Democrats are calling for his/her head. Usually with the minimal amount of evidence.

There is the difference.

Look how fast someone brought up Clinton in this thread above. Does that tell you anything?

Don

I was right. I hopefully will get a decent Senator soon. We don't rally around our Dems, but we do have higher standards. I guess sometimes you have to go with what you can get.

Sorry to the Liberal Louisianans down there - but it is what it is...

Politics is a team sport, and the hard right is rallying around what few seats they have solid red at this time. Quite a contrast to what the Dems did up in Massachusetts.

"Do I look guilty to you? No, wait, forget I asked that." - DDV (R)