December's GOP Asshat of the Month

There were no clearcut winners for 2006's final month in terms of a GOP asshat, but the guy who looks to be on the disappointing end of a huge gamble is John McCain. Apparently under the assumption that a troop withdrawal from Iraq was imminent, McCain's official position on Iraq in the past few months is that the only workable solution is to deploy MORE troops. McCain's logic, politically, appears to have been that calling for a troop "surge" while everybody else is calling for troop withdrawal would allow him to stake out a position hawkish enough to win over Republican primary voters and give a hindsight reminder to all voters in 2008 that "if we had just done what I had recommended, we wouldn't have been humiliated by cutting and running from Iraq with our tails between our legs." It's not bad political logic, but unfortunately for McCain, it backfired. George Bush has actually taken McCain's advice and is deploying thousands more troops to Iraq. Unless a miracle occurs and this troop surge produces positive results, McCain no longer has a leg to stand on with his Iraq position in the campaign. It sometimes seems as though George Bush's primary reason for being on this Earth is to deny John McCain the Presidency.

I thought long and hard about who to coronate as the GOP Asshat of the entire year of 2006, and settled on two very worthy contenders. The runner-up is Virginia Senator George Allen, who was the frontrunner for the 2008 Presidential nomination only six months ago, but after a series of astounding self-imposed campaign gaffes, couldn't even get re-elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate. It was said by a number of analysts that Allen would have probably won a second term if he had not said a word or spent one minute on the campaign trail this year....and that only by opening his mouth did he ruin his career. That's probably a fair assessment. The Asshat Supreme of 2006 has to go to Florida Congressman Mark Foley, however. Here's a guy that flaunted his pedophilia to every male teenage page that came to Washington, practically begging to be outed. Rather than recognize that his personal problem represented a golden opportunity for political exploitation and step down, Foley (and his party's leadership) took a pointless gamble and stood by their man....0nly to have the scandal blow up in their faces at the worst possible moment. Without the Mark Foley scandal, the Democrats may not have had the momentum to win back the House of Representatives this year. It can be legitimately argued that Foley was a bigger factor in the GOP's loss of majority party status than George Bush this year.