The Republican Party saw its “family values” boat head up the proverbial creek without a paddle last week. There is nothing else the Party can say after its “holier than thou” agenda took the ultimate hit. The resignation of Florida House Representative, Mark Foley, after revelations that he repeatedly sent sexually suggestive e-mails to a teenage congressional page in 2003 (and made several other solicitations to a number of other pages over the years) has called into question whether the sledgehammer, called “family values,” that the Republicans have beat over everyone’s head the past decade was nothing more than a charade to maintain political control of the government.

Foley, who has essentially been the party’s “poster boy” for child protection legislation the past few years, has been the same type of sexual predator Republicans have been trying to put in jail under their “tough on crime/protect every child” agenda. What makes the revelation so demoralizing is that Republican Party leadership, in particularly House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, had known about the e-mails for some time after a 20 year congressional aide (and party loyalist), Kirk Fordham, resigned over the party’s refusal to check Foley. Fordham said he told Hastert over two years ago, a claim Hastert has since affirmed.

As head of his party, Hastert had the responsibility of keeping all the skeletons in the closet and the Republicans’ morality platform intact. When this bone fell out, it just may have been an indicator that the Republicans boat may be too full to keep the “family values” rhetoric afloat. This episode is just the latest in what the American people now know to be a charade, a charade that might turn the page on the Republican Party’s majority hold on Congress in the mid-term elections this November.

The more the Republicans try to say this is an anomaly, the more it’s obvious that it’s not. And the walls are coming down around Jericho. The same week as the Foley revelation, another Republican House member, Don Sherwood (R-PA), was on television apologizing for having a mistress, and denying that he beat her. This just after it was revealed that the Republican Party had planted a “journalist” in the White House press corps to loft snowball questions to President Bush and had logged into the White House over 200 times, when there had only been 90 press conferences during Bush’s Administration. We don’t have to use much imagination of what the one hundred plus may have been about. This same “reporter” was found to have a pornographic website and a reputation as a male prostitute. He’s also the same person that leaked the story that it was Robert Novack had outted an CIA agent—giving cover to the administration (for a minute). This, after the disclosure that there were several GOP gay members who were essentially “locked in the closet” by the same party who proposed the Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment.

Then there was the CBS report that cited an “unidentified” House GOP-er stating that there was a whole “network of gay GOP members and GOP staffers” that “protect each other” from the ideologues within the various fringes of the party. Now we can surmise where the 9/11 and Iraq war leaks in the Bush Administration came from. After Bush’s vicious attack on gays, some people are known to be retaliatory. The point is that many in the Republican Party made a career out of “holier than thou” politics.

This is same party that led the impeachment call on President Clinton for having an affair, then turned around and lost its speaker, Newt Gingrich (who’s planning a political comeback), who resigned the speakership for having an affair—but it didn’t stop Republicans from gay bashing, getting on the sexual predator bandwagon with legislation and constant presence on talking head shows, and now trying to cover up the party’s acquiescence on these issues they claim have destroyed American family values. God tells us not to judge. “Judge not yet ye be judged…” certainly these Bible thumpin’ ideologues must have come across that verse a time or two? Well, it’s almost certain that the American public will be doing some judging come November. now that the GOP has shown themselves for who they really are.

The Republican spin machine is in motion, with denials and denouncements all over the place, but what does that mean at the end of the day? It means Republicans will have to find another drum to beat because their claim to be the promoters of American “family values” has been counterfeit. It just didn’t take a hit. It took the Lipton plunge. Talk about an underhanded pitch to knock out of the park. Let’s see if the Democrats can hit “a slow one” over the plate for a change. They certainly haven’t been able to hit the GOP’s curve ball.

Why? Because the jig is up. Family values was just a charade for the party of “holier than thou.” One we can now turn the page on since the GOP can’t leave congressional pages alone.

Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America. He can be reached at AnthonySamad.com.

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