Tuesday, May 18, 2010

GOP Abstinence Champion Mark Souder Admits Affair With Staffer

From an article at The Huffington Post:
Mark Souder, a Republican congressman from Indiana, has announced that he will resign his seat over an affair with a female aide. Fox News identified Souder's mistress as Tracy Jackson, a "part-time aide who worked in his northern Indiana district office."

"Jackson is still on staff," Fox News reported. "She is described as being in her mid-40s and married. Jackson handled communications for Souder in the district and periodically travelled with him."
Last November, Souder's office posted a video of Jackon "interviewing" the Congressman about an abstinence-only education hearing. The caption of the video noted that Souder was "one of the only voices speaking in defense of abstinence education."
Here is a video of Souder discussing abstinence with his alleged mistress:



As expected, Souder issued an apology for his sins.
"It is with great regret I announce that I am resigning from the U.S. House of Representatives as well as resigning as the Republican nominee for Congress in this fall's election. Diane and my family were more than willing to stand here with me. We are a committed family. But the error is mine and I should bear the responsibility. I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff. I am so shamed to have hurt those I love."
Souder recently won the GOP primary to run for a ninth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, but with this recent revelation, I wonder what this will do for the Democrat competing for that seat.  I also wonder if the right-wing media will focus on this scandal or look the other way.  Looks like claims from the others who competed against Souder were right - that he was a "lapsed conservative."

As always, I don't really care about the personal lives of politicians, but I like to point out these moments of hypocrisy, when conservative legislators continually talk about morals but they don't practice what they preach.  As a side note, him doing a video with his mistress reminds me of John Edwards.

4 comments:

  1. Kevin, off topic, I cannot load your blog using IE8. The page locks up. I had to switch to Firefox to return your visit. I figured other might be having the same problem.

    On topic, this is a perfect example of GOP family values.

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  2. I'll check into the IE8 problem...

    As for GOP values, I have come to expect that every Republican who campaigns on this issue is guilty of hypocrisy...

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  3. @Kevin
    This was the same problem I mentioned to you in how I have to load the site in Firefox since IE7 and IE8 always took forever to load or would lock up.

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  4. I had read that it may be because of the "followers" gadget...

    I'll drop it and see if that changes.

    ReplyDelete

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