Arizona Democratic Party Calls on Graf to Return Foley-Linked Money

The Democratic Party released a statement today demanding that Randy Graf return any money raised for him by Speaker Dennis Hastert, on the grounds that Hastert covered up a pedophillic sex scandal involving Florida Representative Foley for a year.

"The Republican leadership has admitted that Dennis Hastert knew
about Foley’s disturbing and dangerous behavior for months and did nothing
about it," said Democratic Party Chairman David
Waid.  "Randy Graf should do the right thing and
immediately return the money raised for him last week in Washington by Hastert, the chief architect
in this cover-up."

Personally, I think that’s stretching it a bit. If every politician had to return money to anyone who broke the law or ethics rules, no fundraising would get done at all…. hey, maybe they are on to something here. But seriously, a call like this is a false cry of wolf. The Democratic party should confine such demands to fundraising that is actually itself tied to illegality, campaign fundraising rules violations, or ethical breeches in the actual raising of the money. Not just because the money was raised or donated by a bounder, unless the reason they are in dutch is improper fundraising or financial impropriety, which raises a suspicion of impropriety regarding all the funds they’ve touched.

It would be better if we Democrats didn’t over-reach just to make our press releases sexier.

Harboring a pedophile is a terrible thing, but it has no bearing on Hastert’s fundraising or financial dealings that we are yet aware of. When athe party cries wolf, there had better damned well be a wolf around. In this case, I don’t see a wolf (except for those in sheep’s clothing, of course).

However, given that both Hastert, who protected a pedophile, and Graf’s former campaign manager, who was himself a pedophile, have played a role in Graf’s campaign, it is legitimate to ask: "Hey, Randy, why are pedophiles so attracted to your campaign?"

Oh, that’s bad. I deserve to burn in hell.