"I made a very serious mistake a long time ago, and I have to live with that every day," Vitter replied. He sounded genuine and contrite. "That's not a flippant statement. I need to spend my whole life making up for that."
Then his tone turned a bit defiant. "Anybody who looks at the two cases will see that there is an enormous difference between the two of them," he said. "The people that are trying to draw comparisons to the two cases are people who've never agreed with me on important issues like immigration and other things."
Really? Enormous differences between the two of them? Because you didn't pay that much, Sinator? Oh, that makes it a-ok, then. Further, what in the hell does your stance on immigration have to do with the fact that you carried on an affair with a prostitute and PAID for it?!
Late yesterday, former New Orleans prostitute Wendy Cortez confirmed that Louisiana's junior Senator, David Vitter, was one of her clients back in 1999, the year he won a special election to replace Rep. Bob Livingston, who resigned from office after Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt outed him as an adulterer.
Vitter won the special election in May of 1999, then proceeded to schlep around the Quarter with Ms. Cortez several times a week from July to November 1999. My only question - several times a week? Wasn't he supposed to be doing the people's business up in Washington? Does this mean he missed votes so he could, you know? REALLY?
For information on this ongoing drips and drops of Vitter's peccadilloes, check out PCD's diaries here and here, as well as Oyster's posts over at YRHT.
The DP informs us that "Senator David Vitter has scheduled a 5pm news conference in Metairie today where he is expected to finally speak publicly about his admitted ties to a Washington, D.C. prostitution ring". In light of this news, I've collected a long review of facts and claims made in the past week about L'Affaire Vitter.
(In honor of the 2 year anniversary - July 16, 2007 - of the Sinning Senator's revelations that he was, um, a Sinning Senator, Daily Kingfish will be promoting diaries from that time. Here's the first one. - promoted by ryan)
Boysie Bollinger, the New Orleans shipyard tycoon and a major force in the Louisiana Republican Party, a man who has "served as a delegate to every Republican National Convention since 1976, and was the State of Louisiana’s Finance Chairman for the George W. Bush for President Campaign and Campaign Chair for his General Election.... was State Finance Chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party on three occasions and served on the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee," recently told reporter John Hill something that, until he said it, no other Louisiana Republican political insider had been willing to admit: That insiders have known quite well and for quite some time about the allegations that David Vitter was a frequent patron of prostitutes and that they understood the damage it could inflict if the story were made public.
Hill quotes Bollinger as stating, "We (Louisiana Republican party insiders) discussed this exact fact, that this bomb could go off." Hill writes party insiders had known about these allegations as early as 2002, though he doesn't specify when Bollinger and other insiders had these discussions.
Of course, although it is disturbing that insiders knew and discussed these allegations yet still decided to support Vitter during his 2004 Senate race, it's not too surprising. After all, in a 2002 interview with Vitter, Jeff Crouere, a conservative talk show host, fielded a phone call from a caller who went by the name "Flaming Liberal," who directly asked Vitter if he would be willing to "sign under the penalty of perjury an affidavit saying you have never had an extramarital affair and you have never known, met or been in the company of one Wendy Cortez," to which Vitter "accidentally" responded by saying those allegations were "absolutely true." And it's not surprising because Republican Chris Tidmore and Republican State Central Committee member Vincent Bruno had made similar accusations against Vitter.
But in this onslaught of Vitter coverage, one of the most interesting stories, a story that clearly shows that Vitter and his team of insiders were aware of the real threat of the ticking "time bomb" way back in 2002, has been somewhat glossed over.
(This analysis of the Louisiana GOP's bifurcated reception of L'Affaire Vitter is timely and informative. - promoted by pointecoupeedemocrat)
While David Vitter waits in an undisclosed location until the coast is clear, the Republican spin machine is in damage control mode, but if anything demonstrates the divisions and fractures within the Republican Party, particularly the Louisiana Republican Party, it is their uneven, uncertain, and unbalanced reaction to the Vitter scandal.
Some are rightfully angry. After all, Vitter violated the sanctity of the very institution he so vehemently sought to "protect." He is a man who sold himself to voters on a platform of Christian morality and conservativism, a man who first ascended to national politics after Bob Livingston resigned. And that now seems somewhat ironic. Because the "crime" committed by Livingston, adultery, pales in comparison to what Vitter has admitted, that of being a serial john.
Others, like paid media consultant and conservative pundit Lee Fletcher, are doing their best to divert attention away from Vitter's trangressions and onto the "real culprit." Fletcher would have his audience believe the Vitter scandal is the result of a grand conspiracy, allegedly ordered and orchestrated by a seemingly endless list of former and current public officials. To be sure, Fletcher doesn't deny Vitter's improprieties, though he writes as if forgiveness is a perfunctory obligation of Louisiana citizens. When reading Fletcher's hurried and often garbled responses to this controversy, one can see the nascency of the Vitter counter-attack: the discrediting of Jeanette Maier, the glorification and embellishment of Vitter's accomplishments, the attempt to assign "privacy" to the details of the controversy, the underhanded smearing of Senator Landrieu, and the construction of an impossibly complicated alliance of Vitter foes who worked to "time" this story as "political payback" for the defeat of the immigration reform bill. (Fletcher, predictably, fails to mention or acknowledge that Senator Landrieu voted WITH Vitter on this bill and even voted for Vitter's amendments).
On Monday, he released a statement, admitting that he had “committed a very serious sin in my past” sin for which he “asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there – with God and them.”
Left unsaid is that the good Senator should have thought about all this before undoing his zipper. So now, he is just reaping what he’s sown.
According to ABC News, Vitter released the information to avoid being scooped by Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine. Hustler tied the good Senator to a phone number released by the DC Madam in February of 2001. The Times-Picayune found additional calls from the cell phone to the DC Madam from 1999-2001, while the Senator was a sitting Congressman, having replaced former Rep. Livingston, who resigned rather than face his own peccadilloes being splashed all over the front pages during the Clinton Impeachment hearings.
So that's at least one prostitute. And the good Senator called for President Clinton’s impeachment for his sexual escapades while having a few of his own, with women (yes, that is plural) not his wife.
This brings up the question of whether the Senator uses condoms while screwing around with women not his wife. This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak ... the good Senator is opposed to condoms being handed out in schools, or teaching teenagers about safe sex, it’s abstinence only teaching he espouses. So, we know that the good Senator did not remain faithful to his wife. Did he at least protect her from STD’s? Or is he a bigger asshole than we think?
"Vitter carried on an affair of several months' duration with a “sex worker” from the French Quarter. [And] apparently it's widely known in Louisiana political circles, that Vitter's commercial romance was blessed with issue. Reportedly his natural child now lives with her mother in Alexandria, VA. That they are receiving financial support from the Senator has been shown."
That's at least two prostitutes. And there is yet more to this story ...
Boysie Bollinger
