“Fornigate" - the height of hypocrisy

House of Pain: GOP's Class of '94

Excerpts:

The sex scandals that have tarnished Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) don’t appear to have much in common. Yet there is one thread that binds them together: Both Ensign and Sanford were members of the famed Republican House class of 1994, as well as its latest casualties.

As it turns out, the pressures and demands of political life have inflicted devastating damage not only on the Ensign and Sanford families, but on the families of many of the 71 other freshmen who formed the vanguard of the Republican Revolution.

In the 14 years since that star-crossed class arrived in Washington espousing an agenda that placed family values at its core, no less than a dozen of its members have been caught up in affairs, sex scandals or in messy separations and divorces from their spouses that, in more than a few instances, led to their political downfalls.

The problems started almost as soon as they took office, and by the end of their first year in Congress, the marriages of at least four Republican freshmen had collapsed.

One of the first to see his marriage unravel was Rep. Jim Bunn (R-Ore.) who, not long after taking office in 1995, divorced his wife, married one of his political aides, and later elevated her to chief of staff. Bunn lost his 1996 reelection bid.

Rep. Enid Greene, who became the first female member of Congress from Utah in 1994, spent most of her single term in the House dealing with a scandal of her husband’s making. Joe Waldholtz, who married Greene in 1993, embezzled millions of dollars that he used to help finance her campaign. Once authorities finally caught up with Waldholtz, Greene filed for divorce and took custody of the couple’s daughter. She did not run for reelection in 1996.

Former Rep. Jon Christensen (R-Neb.) was another high-profile casualty—he divorced his wife during his first term after she admitted to marital infidelity.

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Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) got divorced in 1999. Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) and his wife Susan divorced after she accused him of having an affair with his former chief of staff, who he later married.

The GOP Senate Class of 1994 was not immune from family break-up either--Rod Grams, a conservative former House member, split up with his wife in 1996 and went on to marry a member of his staff. The well-publicized divorce was a significant factor in his 2000 re-election defeat.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who resigned his seat in 2006, was in a class by himself—he was forced to step down after becoming embroiled in a controversy involving sexually-explicit messages he sent to young Capitol Hill pages.

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“They all came to town on this great family values train with Newt Gingrich as the engineer,” recalled former Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.). “Then it all started crumbling. It seemed like the louder they talked the more divorces they got.”

Unlike other freshman classes, this one “came in high and mighty,” Schroeder added, a consequence of the dramatic shift in the balance of power in Washington.

“They drank the Kool-Aid and believed their own press,” she said. “Maybe they just thought ‘I’m a much bigger deal than my family now.’”

Linda Killian, author of a book about the 1994 Republican class called, “The Freshmen: What Happened to the Republican Revolution?” said the disconnect between the family values message the freshmen espoused and their messy personal lives has become all too glaring over the years.

“They came in with such high ambition and on such a self-proclaimed moral high ground,” Killian said. “Especially for guys who professed that they were setting a higher standard, they failed at the benchmark they set for themselves.”

Indeed, a decade-and-a-half later, some of their statements seem naïve—or just plain ironic. In a 1998 interview with Congressional Quarterly, Sanford and his wife, Jenny, spoke candidly about how serving in Congress was “not an ideal lifestyle,” as Jenny put it at the time.

“Just look at the divorce rate of our class,” then-Rep. Mark Sanford told CQ. “We’re not exactly bettering the national average.”

Comment: Do you see the problem here? The GOP holding up the "Family Values" banner is a joke! The medium is the message. If our leaders don't have family values, the message is null and void. Contrast the noted liberal Al Franken who is in a long standing traditional marriage.

The GOP is doomed if our leaders cannot keep their pants on!