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Saturday, June 20. 2009
Sex and the Senator
Jeez, I’ve been laying off for too long. It’s been four days and all the news that’s happened! Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada admits having an affair with the wife of a staffer and that the couple were trying to extort money out of him … and then it gets better.There’s no evidence of extortion, the husband, the former staffer, had sent an e-mail to Fox News exposing the senator just days before the senator made his announcement. Apparently, someone at Fox alerted Ensign (although Fox denies it) looking for the senator’s reaction. So, the senator concocts the extortion story (forgetting extortion is a crime and the police are going to investigate) and pleads his mea culpa to the public via a press conference. But it doesn’t end there.
Apparently the wife was a staffer as well for the senator’s PAC and his re-election campaign and when she and the senator started the affair he gave his new sex partner a raise! But the payments didn’t end there. The cuckolded couple have a son who was 19 at the time and the senator put him on the payroll of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (for policy research we’re told), which, at the time, Ensign chaired. But the payments don’t end there either. The cuckolded husband was given a raise as well.
If you look at the details of the payments … err … raises and the son’s employment … a pattern emerges. The couple received their raises when the senator and the woman started the affair. The son wasn’t hired by the NRSC until March of 2008 and all three quit in August 2008 when the senator and his sex partner broke off their affair.
The couple, Doug and Cynthia Hampton, and their son Brandon, were essentially paid off to keep quiet about it all. According to those involved, the affair took place from December 2007 to August 2008. It wasn’t very long and we can guess the only reason it ended was because someone spilled the beans to Doug Hampton.
Senator Ensign blames it on troubles in his own marriage (boy, you think you had trouble then!) and “bad judgment.” Yeah right. On Hardball Friday Chris Matthews thoroughly mocked the whole “bad judgment” defense. It isn’t bad judgment! It’s plain horniness! A guy wants to get laid, a powerful guy, and a woman he’s trusted for years sends him the signals she’s ready and willing and voila! They’re doing the hokey-pokey. Better he had hired hookers in Nevada. At least that’s legal.
Bringing up a bit of hypocrisy: a Republican defender of the party brought up former New York governor Elliott Spitzer and his escapades with the escort to say, “look! It happens on both sides of the aisle!”
Well, Sptizer didn’t put the young woman and her family members on the government payroll. He used his own money. Ensign paid for his sex partner with taxpayer dollars and Republican Party donations. And Spitzer resigned as governor. So far, John Ensign is still a sitting senator. But how long will that last?
In 2007 when Senator Larry Craig of Idaho — a fellow Republican — got busted for soliciting sex from men in a Minneapolis airport restroom, Ensign was one of the first people to call for Craig to resign as a senator. Like Spitzer, Craig eventually resigned. In 1998 Ensign was one of the loudest voices demanding President Clinton resign for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Ensign can take comfort there, Clinton didn’t resign.
Ensign’s reputation as the poster boy for hypocrisy grows. He’s a leading proponent of the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) and the policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the military. He loudly represented himself as a moral authority in the party of family values — he belongs to Promise Keepers, an organization of men who vow to treat their wives and wedding vows with respect.
All of that is in Senator Ensign’s resume and he wants us to believe it was “bad judgment” that led to his affair? How about hubris. Sounds more like the arrogance of a guy who figured he’s so powerful he could get away with it than “bad judgment.”
When the party of “NO” steps up to the microphones to defend DoMA, let’s ask them how their party fairs in defense of marriage and “family values.” Larry Craig, a married man, busted for soliciting sex from men, Senator David Vitter, caught paying to have sex with prostitutes, former Congressman Mark Foley who was trying to solicit sex from underage teenage male Congressional pages.
As far as I’m concerned, whatever our elected officials do in the assorted bedrooms — and airport stalls — they frequent is none of my business. If they want to hire prostitutes, male or female, and it’s legal, by all means. Hell it should be legal everywhere! If the public official is married that’s between them and their spouses. But when these very same people are the loudest voices condemning such behavior, and they lie about it as Senator Ensign appears to be doing and use our tax dollars to pay for their sex, that’s an entirely different story.
In many respects though, it’s the same old story from Republicans: it never applies to them. Hypocrites.
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