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When In Doubt, Blame Soros

As the Foley scandal casts its long, dark shadow over the GOP, embroiling the likes of Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, and Tom Reynolds, among others, no amount of damage control seems capable of containing the fallout. But you have to hand it to the Republicans for trying. Over the last couple days they’ve dusted off a well worn line, which they never fail to trot out when things are looking particularly bleak for the GOP: George Soros is behind this.

Why Soros? After all, he wasn't the one sending creepy emails or dirty IMs to congressional pages. That was Mark Foley. Nor is he at fault for failing to act after being warned of Foley’s lascivious behavior toward the pages. That was Hastert. In the minds of some Republicans, Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist who has donated generous sums of his fortune to democratic candidates and causes, is the kingpin behind a vast conspiracy to dismantle the Republican Party. So, in their thinking, it would follow that Soros and the watchdog groups that are funded by his Open Society Institute, such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), are pulling the strings on a well-timed effort to taint the Republican Party just before the mid-term elections by leaking Foley's emails to the press.

“The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros,” Hastert (who has previously intimated that Soros’ philanthropic efforts may be funded by “drug money”) told the Chicago Tribune yesterday. On Fox last night, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly were also preoccupied by this prospect. Interviewing Brian Ross, the ABC reporter who broke the scandal, O'Reilly said, “Now the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is a far left group. George Soros gives a lot of money to it through his Open Society Institute. They apparently are the ones that drove this thing behind the scenes. Is that what you're hearing?”

“I'm not familiar with them,” Ross responded. “They didn't drive us.”

Of course, there isn’t a shred of truth to the Soros/CREW conspiracy angle (though CREW was in possession of some of Foley’s emails earlier this summer and forwarded them to the FBI). As The Hill reported today, the source who provided the Foley emails to several news outlets back in July, via an intermediary, was a House GOP aide. According to The Hill:

That Foley’s scandalous communications came to public light during Congress’s final week in Washington was largely determined by the media outlets which obtained the suspicious e-mails in the middle of the summer, said the person who provided them to reporters several months ago.

This, unfortunately, is not likely to stop right wingers from dissembling. Unable to scapegoat Soros or CREW, they will simply move onto their next favorite target – the liberal media, led by Brian Ross, who no doubt timed his report to deal a death blow to the GOP.

Posted by Daniel Schulman on 10/05/06 at 10:10 AM | E-mail | Print

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