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Hey, Curt, At Least The CIA Didn’t Attack Her Wedding!

Curt Weldon is upset at the vast conspiracy that is targeting his children (one of whom is suspected of benefiting from alleged contract-rigging that her father facilitated).  I’m sure it was the “liberal media” that ordered the search of his daughter’s house (or perhaps the liberal media has controlled the FBI all this time–how clever!), […]

Curt Weldon is upset at the vast conspiracy that is targeting his children (one of whom is suspected of benefiting from alleged contract-rigging that her father facilitated).  I’m sure it was the “liberal media” that ordered the search of his daughter’s house (or perhaps the liberal media has controlled the FBI all this time–how clever!), and it was Joe Sestak who ordered the investigation into Weldon’s possible favouritism and corruption.  It’s one thing to complain if a candidate’s children are being dragged into an election to score some cheap point, where it clearly has no relevance, but when there are apparently solid charges of fixing federal contracts to benefit your blood relations the criticism is not really about your children but about you, the alleged contract-fixing Congressman. 

It may be the case that Weldon and his family have done nothing wrong, but one does get tired of Republicans complaining about the timing of this or the timing of that when one of theirs is implicated in salacious or criminal activity.  Note that none among them ever gets upset about the timing of things that are supposed to work to Republican advantage (no surprise there); no one was exactly overcome with angst that they passed their raft of national security legislation a month and a half before an election.  Yet when the Mark Foley bomb was dropped, it was “timing” this and “conspiracy” that and “what did Dan Rather have to do with it?” (the last one is fictitious, but it pretty well captures the spirit of the response).  Perhaps they might pay more attention to avoiding that kind of behaviour in the first place and spend less time worrying about the timing of the revelations of their (alleged) behaviour. 

The ultimate weakness of the “suspicious timing” defense, besides how paranoid it makes you look, is that, even if true, it just means that your enemies are smarter than you are.  To invoke this defense is to say, “I’m not very good at this whole political warfare bit, but vote for me and I’ll fight for you!”  When the adversary launches a surprise attack, you don’t say, “My, what suspiciously good timing they have!”  If you have any interest in staying alive, in this case politically, you would presumably take up some kind of defensive position and fight back.  You would not whine about how mean the media and your opponent are being to your children.  You would attempt, however lamely, to change the subject instead of feeding the news cycle with more quotes and soundbites that make you sound desperate.

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