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Republican
family values
sex criminals
Over the past several decades we Democrats have had to get used to repeated accusations that we are immoral and evil and responsible for everything bad in the world -- the Clinton impeachment was the culmination of this. I think that it's time to turn the guns around.
Back in 1994 on the eve of a midterm election, House Speaker Newt Gingrich used the horrifying case of Susan Smith, who had killed her two young children in hopes of being united with her lover, as evidence that the Democrats were ruining the country, saying: "How a mother can kill her two children,14 months and 3 years, in hopes that her boyfriend would like her is just a sign of how sick the system is, and I think people want to change. The only way you get change is to vote Republican."
Gingrich's charge that Smith's murder of her children had something to do with the Democratic Party was deluded and slanderous from the start, and most thought that capitalizing politically on such a horrible event was disgusting. This did not keep the media from publicizing his claim, however, and for all anyone knows Gingrich's smear tipped some votes the Republicans' way. In any case, the election was a big victory for Newt.
Only after the election did the real facts come out. Susan Smith's stepfather, Beverly Russell, was far from a Democrat: he was a figure of some importance in the South Carolina Republican Party and in Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. This revelation alone invalidated Gingrich's ludicrous argument; but on top of this it turned out that Russell had been molesting Smith for years, starting when Smith was in her middle teens.*
Oddly enough, once the reality became known, the media mostly dropped the story. Imaginary and wildly false charges against Democrats are OK, but when actual facts show up implicating Republicans, then it is time to show restraint and good taste and consideration for the family's feelings. You can go figure this one out for yourself.**
As we know, bizarre and creepy family life is actually quite common among conservatives. For Exhibit B, let's look at the Schmitz family of southern California, the most famous member of which is May Kay LeTourneau -- a married schoolteacher and mother now in prison for sexual abuse of a sixth-grade student, by whom she has borne two additional children.
“ 'Can’t you understand that this is not a story about me,' an unrepentant LeTourneau told George magazine. 'It’s a story of two remarkable men.' Those would be her thirteen-year-old student and her domineering father, both of whom LeTourneau loved beyond reason".
LeTourneau's father was John G. Schmitz, a John Birch Society member who served in the California State Senate as a Republican from 1964 to 1970 and in Congress from 1970 to 1972. In 1972 he ran from the right for president against Nixon, getting about a million votes. This did not keep him from returning to the California State Senate as a Republican from 1978 to 1982; in 1984 he ran again for Congress, but was defeated by Bob Dornan (who for once in his life could pose as a moderate).
Unsurprisingly, Schmitz's personal ethics were hardly congruent with his pious political rhetoric. His political career was ended mostly by the revelation that, besides his public family-values family (five children), he had another, secret family consisting of a German ex-student of his and two more children. (In a bizarre twist, their infant son was found by child welfare agents to have a peculiarly mutilated penis, the reasons for which were never explained.) His comment on all this was simply “I ought to get the Right to Life man-of-the-year award for this.” After retiring from his other career in teaching , Schmitz moved to the Washington D.C. area, where he bought a house which had once belonged to Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin -- Schmitz's political idol.
There's still another chapter to the story. John G. Schmitz's son John P. Schmitz did not share his father's disdain for George Bush, whom he served as Deputy Counsel from 1984 to 1993. He was involved in Iran Contra as a deputy to C. Boyden Gray (and as an associate of Janet Rehnquist). Schmitz's was one of the few Iran-Contra players to refuse to be interviewed by the independent counsel, and was highly instrumental, as was renquist, in protecting Bush. Bush was never questioned, and a diary he ketp was never examined; Walsh's final report read "The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete" (Chapter 28, second paragraph ).
Since then, John P. Schmitz has popped up every once in awhile. He seems to have had dealings with Iraq before the Gulf War, and with his present law firm has worked for Enron, Bayer (producer of Cipro), and United Airlines (9/11 lawsuit); his firm also has a Central Asian office in Tashkent. Schmitz, along with many men of high repute, is a member of the boards of directors of the American Council on Germany and the Atlantic Council of the US.
Some may ask why I'm willing to get down in the gutter with these guys. The answer is that right now I'm playing the game the way it's played, but that I'm more than willing to declare a truce -- although somehow I just don't think that's going to happen. Democrats and liberals have been having shit flicked at us pretty continually now for decades, and people should know that there's plenty of shit on both sides.
It would be nice if our conservative Christian friends suddenly came to be filled with the milk of human kindness, or even if they started to play fair, but it would also be nice if Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy were real. So as far as I'm concerned, it should be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth from here on out --or at least until the Tooth Fairy shows up.
* Googling "Susan Smith" / "Beverly Russell" brings up only about 40 stories on the case, all but four of them from left-wing or secular-humanist advocacy sites. The only major-media story, from CNN, does not mention Beverly Russell's close ties to the Christian Coalition and to the South Carolina Republican Party.
** In a coincidence that really isn't as strange as it may seem, at the time when the killings took place, Smith's stepfather Russell was already under investigation for the misuse of tax-exempt funds in Pat Robertson's political campaign.
MORE:
Bonus: Recent Republican Sex Criminal
John Fund tribute to Schmitz, Sr.: Fund , formerly of the Wall Street Journal, had an affair with an ex-lover's daughter, whom he beat and bullied.
Mary Kay LeTourneau tribute site
Excerpt from Susan Smith's mother's book
The brother, John P. Schmitz:
Iraq Arms sales involvements: Rep. Gonzalez's 1992 (post-Gulf-War) investigation
"I am introducing into the Record an internal State Department memo dated August 8, 1990. The memo is addressed to Mr. Robert Kimmitt, the former Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the State Department. Mr. Kimmitt is currently the United States Ambassador to Germany, and he was one of the primary architects of the United States policy toward Iraq. This State Department memorandum indicates that President Bush had to waive conflict-of-interest rules for 11 Cabinet officers and Cabinet-level officials so that they could participate in the formulation of the United States response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990. "